| 词组 | aggravate, aggravation, aggravating |
| 释义 | aggravate, aggravation, aggravating There is a body of opinion with a long tradition holding that aggravate should only be used to mean "make worse" and that its use to mean "irritate, exasperate, annoy" is wrong, incorrect, childish, vulgar, colloquial, or (at best) informal. A good deal of expressed opinion on this topic has accumulated since Richard Grant White condemned it in 1870 and John Stuart Mill labeled it "a vulgarism of the nursery" in one of the later editions of his A System of Logic (1872), but it is by no means unanimous. Here is a sampling: • Richard Grant White 1870: ... misused by many persons ignorantly... by many others thoughtlessly, in the sense of provoke, irritate, anger. Hodgson 1889: Its employment as a synonym for 'irritate' or 'vex,' being quite superfluous, cannot be defended Bierce 1909: But a person cannot be aggravated, even if disagreeable or bad. Women are singularly prone to misuse of this word. Utter 1916:... we may aggravates man's ill temper ... but not the man himself. Whipple 1924: Aggravate means to make worse and never should be used as a synonym for annoy, exasperate, or vex. Fowler 1926:... should be left to the uneducated. It is for the most part a feminine or childish colloquialism.... Treble & Vallins 1937: The use of aggravate with a personal object... is purely colloquial It should never appear in written English. Bernstein 1958: ... it should not be used to mean "irritate" or "exasperate." Shaw 1970: Standard usage: Sneezing aggravated his wound. The mosquito annoyed—not aggravated— me. Fowler 1965 (Gowers's revision): It is time to recognize that usage has beaten the grammarians, as it so often does, and that the condemnation of this use of aggravate has become a fetish. Copperud 1970: The consensus is that the struggle to limit aggravate to the traditional sense has been lost. Sellers 1975: Aggravate and annoy are not synonymous. Bander 1978: This word is incorrect in the sense of irritate or annoy. Little, Brown 1980: ... in writing it should not be used in its colloquial meaning of "irritate" or "exasperate." Reader's Digest 1983: The use of aggravate to mean 'irritate, anger'... is standard and correct. Einstein 1985: To aggravate is to take something that irritates and make it worse. There are many more commentators, but by now the general idea is clear: in recent years opinion has begun to swing away from the White-Mill condemnation, but there are still holdouts. Aggravate was introduced into English in the 16th century, straight from the past participle of the Latin verb aggravare, "to make heavier." It replaced an earlier word aggrege, used by Chaucer and earlier writers, which had dropped out of use around 1500. It was first used in several senses now obsolete but by 1597 was being used in its "make worse" sense. Only fourteen years later, in 1611, it appeared in the "annoy" sense. The 1611 use is by one Randle Cotgrave, who used it (along with exasperate) to gloss a word in his French-English dictionary. Clearly Cotgrave considered the meaning familiar enough to make aggravate useful as a gloss. The evidence suggests, however, that the "annoy" sense was primarily in spoken use. The OED, which labels the sense familiar, shows only a 17th-century book of travels and Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa (1748) before the 19th century. Samuel Pegge, a Londoner interested in dialect, included the "annoy" sense in a list of Cockneyisms he published in 1807—further evidence that the sense was current in speech. Some of our earlier American citations also come from the realm of speech—even though fictional: • ... for writin' only aggravates your opponents, and never convinces them —Thomas C. Haliburton, The Clockmaker, 1837 • "O, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again...." —Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, 1876 It seems likely that during the 19th century the usage of the "annoy" sense increased, especially in writing or printing. Mill complains that it "has crept into almost all newspapers, and into many books"; White's dislike may have been similarly inspired, as many of his complaints about language are based on journalistic examples. White's objection, however, seems to center primarily on etymology—he insists on the literalness of "make heavier" and conveniently ignores the extension of meaning to "make worse." (The etymology of this word still comes in for mention—as recently as Freeman 1983 and Kilpatrick 1984.) One of the earlier expositors of etymology, Hodgson (1889), rather undermines his own argument, in the course of showing off his knowledge of Latin, by revealing that the secondary sense of aggravare is "to bear down upon or annoy." Sir Ernest Gowers in Plain Words (1947) credits Dickens with giving "powerful encouragement" to the usage, and, if appearance in novels counts for a bit more than newspaper use, then Dickens and Thackeray probably were influential. They are cited, at least, as evidence for the sense in numerous dictionaries. Gowers further observes (in Fowler 1965) that "writers have shown no less persistence in refusing to be trammeled by this admonition [to avoid the use]." Here are a few examples from a number of writers (and the speech of one U.S. President) in a variety of settings: • Tm very much obliged to you, Misses Brown,' said the unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated —Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, 1848 (OED) • ... no doubt our two countries aggravate each other from time to time —Oliver Wendell Holmes d. 1935, letter to Sir Frederick Pollock, 27 Dec. 1895 • There are times when the French get aggravated and displeased by us —Jimmy Carter, quoted in N.Y. Times, 14 Feb. 1980 • She noticed his pleasant and contented manner ... and it merely aggravated her the more —Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, 1900 • The mere sight of her twisted mouth ... seemed to aggravate him to further abuse —John Cowper Powys, Ducdame, 1925 • ... he aggravated 'em a lot by making 'em think he would —Will James, Smoky, 1926 • The man's lack of friends amazed and then began to aggravate and trouble Clancy —John Cheever, New Yorker, 24 Mar. 1951 • Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance —Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener," 1856 • ... the celebrated incident of Mr. Yarborough's declining to participate directly in the motorcade, ... greatly aggravating the President —William F. Buckley, Jr., National Rev., 19 Nov. 1971 • Keitel... was aggravated at the delay —William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1960 • ... when his silly conceit and his youthful pomposity about his not-very-good early work has begun to aggravate us —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 John Stuart Mill's comments contained the complaint that when the word is used in its proper sense, the meaning "it is probable, is already misunderstood." Jespersen 1905, who reprinted Mill's comments, remarked that he "exaggerated." This is surely true: the "make worse" sense of aggravate is by far the more common in edited prose, and there never seems to have been a problem of misunderstanding. Dickens certainly used the sense as well as the "annoy" sense: • T have a long series of insults to avenge,' said Nicholas, flushed with passion; 'and my indignation is aggravated by the dastardly cruelties practiced on helpless infancy in this foul den.' —Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839 The "make worse" sense continues in vigorous use today and remains the primary meaning of the verb. The case with the derivatives aggravation and aggravating is somewhat different, however. The noun aggravation has been used in the sense "irritation" at least since the time of Jane Austen: • ... and to have Miss Crawford's liveliness repeated to her at such a moment, and on such a subject, was a bigger aggravation —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814 • "... his showing he took me for anything wonderful would have been, I think," the young man reflected, "but an aggravation the more." —Henry James, The Ivory Tower, 1917 • Aggravations between people South and North were getting worse —Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, 1926 The "irritation" sense divides usage with earlier senses about evenly, but our most recent evidence shows that it is beginning to predominate. The participial adjective aggravating has seldom been used to mean anything except "annoying" since early in the 19th century; it may have been, in fact, what set the critics off (it is the form cited by Mill). It is certainly well attested: • ... its grievances had become so numerous and aggravating —Diedrich Knickerbocker (Washington Irving), ,4 History of New York, 1809 • ... kicking pupils with his nailed boots, pulling the hair of some of the smaller boys, pinching the others in aggravating places —Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839 • ... the summons had to be taken out at Stratford-le-Bow (that is where this aggravating man is living) — Lewis Carroll, letter, 11 Nov. 1886 • Among the many boys... was one more aggravating than the rest —Rudyard Kipling, "Baa Baa, Black Sheep," 1888 • ... only it is aggravating to have you talking about so small a business —George Bernard Shaw, letter to Ellen Terry, 16 Sept. 1896 • But Archbishop Tenison, though much out of favour with the Queen, outlived her in a most aggravating manner —G. M. Trevelyan, Blenheim, 1930 (Gowers 1948) • The final effect is interesting, but aggravating — Irwin Shaw, New Republic, 29 Dec. 1947 • ... he can be extremely aggravating and silly —Cyril Connolly, The Condemned Playground, 1946 • ... all the funny papers and Coca-Cola pictures plastering the walls were, he complained, crooked and aggravating —Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1948 • ... blow hot, blow cold, the most aggravating man —Herman Wouk, Marjorie Morningstar, 1955 • ... this most stimulating, original, aggravating writer —Times Literary Supp., 28 Sept. 1967 • Aggravating as they were to Flaubert —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 Conclusion: the senses of aggravate, aggravation, and aggravating involving annoyance were strongly established well before John Stuart Mill and Richard Grant White found fault with them. They seem never to have been entirely vulgarisms, as some early commentators asserted, and there is no doubt that they continue well established in speech and writing today. They are standard. Aggravate in this sense is considerably less frequent in edited prose than in the "make worse" sense; aggravation is somewhat more likely to mean "irritation" than not; aggravating is seldom used except to express annoyance. |
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