Exacerbated - exasperated

Some students have confused the two verbs exacerbate and exasperate, along with their forms exacerbates and exasperates (the 3rd person singular of the present tense); exacerbating and exasperating (the -ing participle; and exacerbated and exasperated (the past tense and participle.

• 'To exacerbate' is 'to make worse'

(Originally it meant 'to make pain more bitter' from the Latin ex-, here an intensive particle, and acerb[us] 'bitter' + the "verbal formative -ate, (ate suffix³" (OED), but now used of many other troubles as well as pain.

• The most common meaning of 'to exasperate' nowadays is 'to make [someone] angry', 'to irritate', 'to enrage'.

It too has changed its meaning. It originally meant 'to make [laws, sounds, language etc] more harsh', or 'to make [a disease etc] worse'; 'to make more painful', or 'to make worse'. (In Latin, ex- here intensified asper, 'rough' and made the verb exasperare, meaning 'to roughen', 'to irritate'.

The confusion between the two may have been more understandable than it is now, when the most important reason for the confusion seems to be due to a process of metathesis.

It is not good to muddle exacerbate and exasperate in academic writing.