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Flare vs Aggravate - What's the difference?

flare | aggravate |

As verbs the difference between flare and aggravate

is that flare is to blaze brightly while aggravate is to make worse, or more severe; to render less tolerable or less excusable; to make more offensive; to enhance; to intensify.

As a noun flare

is a source of brightly burning light or intense heat used to attract attention in an emergency, to illuminate an area, or as a decoy.

flare

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A source of brightly burning light or intense heat used to attract attention in an emergency, to illuminate an area, or as a decoy.
  • * 2010 , James Fleming, Cold Blood
  • *:...when the soldiers openly laughed at him, I knew he was in the bag. While he was putting on the snowplough, the Whites shot up a flare to see what was happening.
  • *, chapter=7
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=The turmoil went on—no rest, no peace. […] It was nearly eleven o'clock now, and he strolled out again. In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened one.}}
  • A widening of an object with an otherwise roughly constant width.
  • * 2003 , Timothy Noakes, Lore of Running , page 270:
  • The flare on the inside of the shoe resists ankle pronation;
  • (aviation) The transition from downward flight to level flight just before landing.
  • (baseball) A low fly ball that is hit in the region between the infielders and the outfielders
  • A type of pyrotechnic that produces a brilliant light or intense heat without an explosion. A colored flare used as a warning on the railroad, a fusee.
  • Derived terms

    * lens flare * nonflared * parachute flare * unflared

    Verb

  • To blaze brightly.
  • The blast furnace flared in the night.
  • To burn unsteadily.
  • The candle flared in a sudden draught.
  • (intransitive) To open outward in shape.
  • The cat flared its nostrils while sniffing at the air.
    The cat's nostrils flared when it sniffed at the air.
    The building flared from the third through the seventh floors to occupy the airspace over the entrance plaza.
    The sides of a bowl flare .
  • To cause to burn.
  • To shine out with a sudden and unsteady light; to emit a dazzling or painfully bright light.
  • To shine out with gaudy colours; to be offensively bright or showy.
  • * Shakespeare
  • With ribbons pendant, flaring about her head.
  • (obsolete) To be exposed to too much light.
  • * Prior
  • flaring in sunshine all the day

    Derived terms

    * flare up

    Anagrams

    * ----

    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