exacerbate = "exaggerate"

[Jonathan Lighter]

You're undoubtedly right, Jim.  So it's just lousy contextualizing.

  "Just."

  JL

Jim Parish <jparish at SIUE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Jim Parish
Subject: Re: exacerbate = "exaggerate"
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Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Looks like those wonderful guys and gals at Wackipedia think these words are synonymous. (Or do I mean "unanimous"? It's "just semantics"!).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Chagnon:
>
> "In 2000, journalist Patrick Tierney accused Chagnon and his colleague Neel, among other things, of exacerbating a measles epidemic among the Yanomamo people in his book Darkness in El Dorado. Groups of historians, epidemiologists, anthropologists, and filmmakers who had direct knowledge of
the events investigated Tierney's claims. These groups ultimately rejected the worst allegations concerning the measles epidemic."

They may be using the word correctly. It appears that among the
allegations were that the epidemic was caused by vaccinations
administered by Neel; that Neel was aware of this; and that he
continued with the vaccinations despite this. See
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/chagnon.html

Jim Parish

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