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Exasperate vs Rage - What's the difference?

exasperate | rage |

As verbs the difference between exasperate and rage

is that exasperate is to frustrate, vex, provoke, or annoy; to make angry while rage is .

As an adjective exasperate

is (obsolete) exasperated; embittered.

exasperate

English

Verb

(exasperat)
  • To frustrate, vex, provoke, or annoy; to make angry.
  • * , Macbeth , act 3, sc. 6:
    • this report
    Hath so exasperate the king that he
    Prepares for some attempt of war.
  • * 1851 , , Moby Dick , ch. 3:
    • The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
  • * 1853 , , Bleak House , ch. 11:
    • Beadle goes into various shops and parlours, examining the inhabitants; always shutting the door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy, exasperating the public.
  • * 1987 , " Woman of the Year: Corazon Aquino," Time , 5 Jan:
    • [S]he exasperates her security men by acting as if she were protected by some invisible shield.
  • * 2007 , " Loyal Mail," Times Online (UK), 4 June (retrieved 7 Oct 2010):
    • News that Adam Crozier, Royal Mail chief executive, is set to receive a bumper bonus will exasperate postal workers.

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) Exasperated; embittered.
    • (Shakespeare)
  • * Elizabeth Browning
    • Like swallows which the exasperate dying year / Sets spinning.

    See also

    * exacerbate ----

    rage

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Violent uncontrolled anger.
  • *
  • *:They burned the old gun that used to stand in the dark corner up in the garret, close to the stuffed fox that always grinned so fiercely. Perhaps the reason why he seemed in such a ghastly rage was that he did not come by his death fairly. Otherwise his pelt would not have been so perfect. And why else was he put away up there out of sight?—and so magnificent a brush as he had too.
  • A current fashion or fad.
  • :
  • (lb) Any vehement passion.
  • *(Francis Bacon) (1561-1626)
  • *:in great rage of pain
  • * (1800-1859)
  • *:He appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat.
  • *(Nathaniel Hawthorne) (1804-1864)
  • *:convulsed with a rage of grief

    • Synonyms

    * fury * ire

    Derived terms

    * pavement rage * road rage * roid rage * trolley rage

    Verb

    (rag)
  • (label) To act or speak in heightened anger.
  • (label) To move with great violence, as a storm etc.
  • * (John Milton) (1608-1674)
    • The madding wheels / Of brazen chariots raged ; dire was the noise.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1892, author=(James Yoxall)
    • , chapter=5, title= The Lonely Pyramid , passage=The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom.
  • * 1922 , (Virginia Woolf), (w, Jacob's Room) Chapter 1
    • "The two women murmured over the spirit-lamp, plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles while the wind raged and gave a sudden wrench at the cheap fastenings.
  • * 2012 October 31, David M. Halbfinger, "[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/nyregion/new-jersey-continues-to-cope-with-hurricane-sandy.html?hp]," New York Times (retrieved 31 October 2012):
    • Though the storm raged up the East Coast, it has become increasingly apparent that New Jersey took the brunt of it.
  • *
  • (label) To enrage.
    • (Shakespeare)

    Anagrams

    * ----