Escalate vs Aggravate - What's the difference?
escalate | aggravate |
to increase (something) in extent or intensity; to intensify or step up
in technical support, to transfer a telephone caller to the next higher level of authority
To make worse, or more severe; to render less tolerable or less excusable; to make more offensive; to enhance; to intensify.
To give coloring to in description; to exaggerate; as, to aggravate circumstances. — .
To exasperate; to provoke, to irritate.
* 1748 , (Samuel Richardson), Clarissa :
* {{quote-book, year=1905, author=
, title=
, chapter=1 * 1977 , (Alistair Horne), A Savage War of Peace , New York Review Books 2006, p. 85:
As verbs the difference between escalate and aggravate
is that escalate is to increase (something) in extent or intensity; to intensify or step up while aggravate is to make worse, or more severe; to render less tolerable or less excusable; to make more offensive; to enhance; to intensify.escalate
English
Verb
(transitive'' and ''intransitive )- Violence escalated during the election.
- The shooting escalated the existing hostility.
- The tech 1 escalated the caller to a tech 2.
Derived terms
* deescalateaggravate
English
Verb
(aggravat)- 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.
- If both were to aggravate her parents, as my brother and sister do mine.
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. […]”}}
- Ben Bella was aggravated by having to express himself in French because the Egyptians were unable to understand his Arabic.