It's the word of the day for May 2nd.

Today's word is exasperate, spelled E-X-A-S-P-E-R-A-T-E.

Exasperate is a verb. To exasperate someone is to cause them irritation or annoyance,

or to make them angry. Here's the word used, and a sentence from the Niagara Falls review.

My tendency to throw remote historical observations into a conversation exasperates my wife

and often results in chuckles and

eye rolls from friends. The word exasperate is frequently confused with the word

exacerbate, and with good reason. Not only do these words resemble one another in spelling and

pronunciation, they also at one time held exceedingly similar meanings.

Exasperate is today most commonly used as a synonym of annoy. But for several hundred years,

it also had the meanings to make more grievous and to make harsh or harsher. Exacerbate is now

the more common choice when one seeks to indicate that something is becoming increasingly better, violent, or unpleasant.

It comes in part from the Latin word acer, meaning sharp, whereas exasperate is from Asper, the Latin word for rough.

The latter is also the source of the English word asperity,

which can refer to the roughness of a surface or the roughness of someone's temper.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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