exacerbate
General verb
To make a problem, situation or feeling worse.
Cutting the support staff only exacerbated the backlog of cases.
Medicine verb
To make a disease, symptom or situation more severe or worse.
Excessive fluid intake may exacerbate the edema in a patient with congestive heart failure.
Law verb
To make an injury, condition, or situation worse.
The delayed treatment exacerbated an injury the defendant had already caused.
Business verb
To make a problem or conflict worse.
Publishing the accusations only exacerbated the dispute the mediators were trying to cool.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
Get words like exacerbate on your lock screen, a few a day, with review that makes them stick.
Download on the App Store Lexfall puts a new word on your home and lock screen through widgets, so you learn without opening an app. Free to download. After a free trial, a subscription unlocks every field. Built for iPhone, iOS 15.1 or later.