To exacerbate something means to make a bad situation worse. When you exacerbate a problem, you're not creating it from scratch, you're taking something that's already troublesome and making it even more difficult to handle.

Think about a small cut on your finger. If you keep picking at it, you exacerbate the injury, turning a minor scrape into something more painful and slower to heal. Or imagine two friends having a minor disagreement. If someone spreads rumors about what each person said, they exacerbate the conflict, transforming a small misunderstanding into a serious fight.

The word often appears in discussions about health and problems. A doctor might warn that staying up late will exacerbate your flu symptoms. A teacher might notice that teasing exacerbates a student's anxiety about presentations. Scratching a mosquito bite exacerbates the itching.

The opposite of exacerbate would be to improve, soothe, or alleviate a problem. When you exacerbate something, you're moving in the wrong direction, like adding fuel to a fire instead of water.