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Literary notes about aggravated (AI summary)

The term "aggravated" is often deployed to intensify descriptions of both physical states and emotional experiences, serving as a linguistic tool to demonstrate an escalation of severity or complexity. It can denote a literal worsening of conditions—such as intensified physical pain or disease symptoms [1, 2]—or figuratively heighten emotional states, like deepening anger, despair, or fear [3, 4]. In historical and social commentaries, the word underscores how external circumstances or policies exacerbate already difficult situations, be it in matters of public distress [5, 6] or moral and political decay [7]. Thus, authors leverage "aggravated" to inject a sense of mounting tension and urgency, enriching the narrative with a layered intensity that resonates with the reader.
  1. The cold that followed was of an aggravated kind, and it has now brought with it the worst consequence—fever.
    — from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
  2. The wound indeed is of the same dimensions; but the edges are jagged, and there is a dull underpain that survives the smart which it had aggravated.
    — from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  3. This feeling was aggravated by his being unable to tell her plainly the cause of his anger.
    — from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy
  4. But the more vehemently I insisted, the more he aggravated my distress by his insulting, gleeful laugh.
    — from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
  5. The public distress was aggravated by the fears and reproaches of superstition.
    — from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
  6. The guilt of the emperor is aggravated by his long and frequent residence at Thessalonica.
    — from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
  7. The most wealthy families ruined by partial fines and confiscations, and the great body of his subjects oppressed by ingenious and aggravated taxes.
    — from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

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