different between irritate vs aggravate

English

Etymology

From Latin irr?t?tus, past participle of irr?t? (“excite, irritate, incite, stimulate”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /????te?t/

Verb

irritate (third-person singular simple present irritates, present participle irritating, simple past and past participle irritated)

1. (transitive) To provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.

   • Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

2. (intransitive) To cause or induce displeasure or irritation.
3. (transitive) To induce pain in (all or part of a body or organism).
4. (transitive, obsolete, Scotland, law) To render null and void.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Archbishop Bramhall to this entry?)

Synonyms

• provoke
• rile

Antonyms

• placate
• please
• soothe

Related terms

Translations

See also

• exasperate
• peeve
• disturb

Italian

Adjective

irritate

1. feminine plural of irritato

Verb

irritate

1. second-person plural present of irritare
2. second-person plural imperative of irritare
3. feminine plural past participle of irritare

Anagrams

• arteriti, atterrii, irretita, ritirate, tiritera, triterai

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ir.ri??ta?.te/, [?r?i??t?ä?t??]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ir.ri?ta.te/, [ir?i?t???t??]

Verb

irr?t?te

1. second-person plural present active imperative of irr?t?

References

• irritate in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• irritate in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

English

Etymology

From Latin aggravatus, past participle of aggravare (“to add to the weight of, make worse, oppress, annoy”), from ad (“to”) + gravare (“to make heavy”), from gravis (“heavy”). See grave and compare aggrieve and aggrege.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?æ?.??.ve??t/

Verb

aggravate (third-person singular simple present aggravates, present participle aggravating, simple past and past participle aggravated)

1. To make (an offence) worse or more severe; to increase in offensiveness or heinousness. [from 16th c.]
   • 1709 Joseph Addison, The Tatler

     The defense made by the prisoner's counsel did rather aggravate than extenuate his crime.

2. (by extension) To make worse; to exacerbate. [from 16th c.]
   • 1837, William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic

     […] to aggravate the horrors of the scene

3. (now rare) To give extra weight or intensity to; to exaggerate, to magnify. [from 16th c.]

4. (obsolete) To pile or heap (something heavy or onerous) on or upon someone. [16th–18th c.]
   • 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Oxford 2009, p. 28:

     In order to lighten the crown still further, they aggravated responsibility on ministers of state.

5. (now chiefly colloquial) To exasperate; to provoke or irritate. [from 16th c.]
   • 1748, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa:

     If both were to aggravate her parents, as my brother and sister do mine.

   • 1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York Review Books 2006, p. 85:

     Ben Bella was aggravated by having to express himself in French because the Egyptians were unable to understand his Arabic.

Usage notes

Although the meaning "to exasperate, to annoy" has been in continuous usage since the 16th century, a large number of usage mavens have contested it since the 1870s. Opinions have swayed from this proscription since 1965, but it still garners disapproval in Garner's Modern American Usage (2009), at least for formal writing.

Synonyms

• (to make worse): heighten, intensify, increase, magnify, exaggerate, exacerbate
• (to exasperate): provoke, irritate, exasperate
• See also Thesaurus:annoy

Antonyms

• (to make worse): alleviate, mitigate

Related terms

• aggravation

Translations

Further reading

• aggravate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• aggravate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Italian

Verb

aggravate

1. second-person plural present indicative of aggravare
2. second-person plural imperative of aggravare
3. feminine plural of aggravato

Latin

Verb

aggrav?te

1. second-person plural present active imperative of aggrav?