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Aggravate vs Impair - What's the difference?

aggravate | impair |

As verbs the difference between aggravate and impair

is that aggravate is to make worse, or more severe; to render less tolerable or less excusable; to make more offensive; to enhance; to intensify while impair is to weaken; to affect negatively; to have a diminishing effect on.

As an adjective impair is

(obsolete) not fit or appropriate.

aggravate

English

Verb

(aggravat)
  • To make worse, or more severe; to render less tolerable or less excusable; to make more offensive; to enhance; to intensify.
  • To aggravate my woes. —
    To aggravate the horrors of the scene. —.
    The defense made by the prisoner's counsel did rather aggravate than extenuate his crime. —Addison.
  • To give coloring to in description; to exaggerate; as, to aggravate circumstances. — .
  • To exasperate; to provoke, to irritate.
  • * 1748 , (Samuel Richardson), Clarissa :
  • If both were to aggravate her parents, as my brother and sister do mine.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1905, author=
  • , title= , chapter=1 citation , passage=“It is a pity,” he retorted with aggravating meekness, “that they do not use a little common sense. The case resembles that of Columbus' egg, and is every bit as simple. […]”}}
  • * 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

    * heighten, intensify, increase, magnify, exaggerate, provoke, irritate, exasperate * See also

    impair

    English

    Alternative forms

    * (l) (qualifier)

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To weaken; to affect negatively; to have a diminishing effect on.
  • (archaic) To grow worse; to deteriorate.
  • (Milton)

    Derived terms

    * (l)

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) Not fit or appropriate.