Dear Geist, Why did my history prof take off marks for writing that a certain general in history was “aggravating”? I had plenty of evidence, including one primary source. When I asked him, he assigned me to figure it out because he wants all his students to be perfectionists like him. —Aggro, Prince George BC
Dear Aggro, Our guess is that the newer usage of aggravate, meaning to annoy or irritate—“Most soldiers found the general aggravating”—doesn’t sit well with your prof. The older meaning has to do with making something worse: “The general’s outburst aggravated the situation.” In its infancy in Latin, the word referred to something getting heavier, as in the related gravity. The meaning of aggravate in the sense you used it is well established, even if flagged in some dictionaries with the notation “(informal).” Most word lovers mourn the loss of certain precise meanings or subtle connotations, but we accept that language is alive. A person who cannot even acknowledge a newer meaning like this one—which has been around for four hundred years—is as likely to be a pedant as a perfectionist. —The Editors
