Word of the Day : December 21, 2021
Exasperate
verb ig-ZASS-puh-rayt
What It Means
Exasperate means “to cause irritation or annoyance to someone” or “to excite the anger of someone.”
// The flight delays began to exasperate people in the airport.
Examples
“His suggestions sometimes exasperate the garden designers, who have their own vision of where things should be.” — Jeanette Marantos, The Los Angeles Times, 6 Nov. 2021
Did You Know?
Exasperate comes from Latin exasperare, whose base, asper, means “rough.” A relative of asper is asperity, which can refer to the roughness of a surface or the roughness of someone’s temper. Another is spurn, meaning “to reject.”
Aquinas College Library 