aggravate meaning and examples

2025-09-05

Meaning

  • Aggravate (verb) means:

    1. To make a problem, situation, or injury worse.
    2. (Informal) To annoy or irritate someone.

Grammar and Usage

  • Part of speech: Verb

  • Transitive: always takes an object

  • Common patterns:

    • aggravate + problem/condition/situation
    • aggravate + person (informal, meaning "annoy")

Variations with prepositions

  • Not usually followed by prepositions directly, but often used with nouns describing conditions (aggravate the pain, aggravate the conflict).

Common Phrases

  • aggravate an injury
  • aggravate the situation
  • aggravate tensions
  • be aggravated by (something)
  • stop aggravating me (informal)

Collocations

  • Verb + object: aggravate symptoms, aggravate disease, aggravate injury, aggravate crisis, aggravate conflict
  • Adverb + aggravate: seriously aggravate, further aggravate, greatly aggravate

Examples

  1. His careless remarks only aggravated the situation.
  2. Running too soon after the accident aggravated her knee injury.
  3. The new tax law aggravated the financial burden on small businesses.
  4. Loud noises tend to aggravate my headache.
  5. His constant complaints really aggravate me.
  6. The conflict was aggravated by poor communication between the two sides.
  7. Smoking can aggravate respiratory problems.
  8. She was aggravated by his rude behavior.
  • For "make worse": worsen, intensify, exacerbate, heighten, escalate
  • For "annoy" (informal use): irritate, bother, bug, vex, exasperate