Literary notes about exacerbating (AI summary)
In literature, “exacerbating” is frequently used to intensify an already negative situation, underlining the escalation of conflict or discomfort. It can denote the deliberate magnification of tensions, as when hostility is deepened [1] or social anxieties are stirred up [2, 3]. At times, it reflects an inadvertent worsening of personal conditions, as illustrated when a character's injuries are not further aggravated by insensitive actions [4]. Whether applied to physical, emotional, or societal struggles, the term works to heighten the reader’s sense of impending crisis and the severity of the unfolding circumstances [5].
- Successive Córtes seemed to take pleasure in exacerbating the hostility of the clergy, whose influence over the mass of the people was unbounded.
— from A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4 by Henry Charles Lea - The Western civilization is using all its arts, its sciences, its philosophy in stimulating and exaggerating and exacerbating the thought of sex.
— from The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Volume 2 by Elizabeth Bisland - Exacerbating these conflicts were tensions among the subject peoples of the Romanov, Hapsburg and Ottoman empires.
— from Century of Light by Bahá'í International Community - Instead of blundering over her and tugging her up and otherwise exacerbating her wounds, he lifted her with tactful kindness to her self-respect.
— from Jaffery by William John Locke - The letter was shrewd, kind, reasonable to an uninterested reader, but must have been exacerbating to Lowell.
— from James Russell Lowell, A Biography; vol. 1/2 by Horace Elisha Scudder
