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Exasperate and exacerbate
by loiswakeman @ 01 Apr. 2008 - 11:40:05

"Dr Charlesworth added that lack of trust about SUDS has also been exasperated by poorly fitted systems..." - NFU Countryside magazine, March 2008.

I don't know if it was the Doctor or the journalist who failed to get it right, but he or she meant exacerbated. Just because the spell checker didn't complain doesn't mean it's the right word! There is no substitute for proper proof-reading or for understanding of difficult words.

Exasperate means to annoy exceedingly; exacerbate means to make worse.

5 comments | Permalink | Recommend this post
Tags: commonly mistaken words, english, proofreading, spellchecker, vocabulary,

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LissaTLissaT pro
01/04/08 @ 19:16

Have I already sent you this?

Owed to the Spell Checker!

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

tylluanpenrytylluanpenry pro
01/04/08 @ 21:09

This is a favourite gripe of mine - spellcheckers make us lazy, not infallible.
They 'exasperate' our poor grasp of volcabulary (only in my case they really do exasperate me, because my spell checker really cannot cope with a lot of the Welsh spellings I have to use in place names!)

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loiswakemanloiswakeman [Member]
http://lois.co.uk
02/04/08 @ 09:15

Indeed they do - it sounds like you need to make extensive use of a custom dictionary for all those placenames - English ones (at least for lesser-known villages) aren't much better.

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LissaTLissaT pro
02/04/08 @ 18:56

I can't say that my own village is well known, and Swallow may well pass spell check, but it's a useless name when it comes to google.

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loiswakemanloiswakeman [Member]
http://lois.co.uk
03/04/08 @ 10:14

More of a boggle than a google, I should imagine. Fortunately Uplyme has no scatological or sexual connotations (that I am aware of).

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