Aggravate

Aggravate (pronounced ag-ruh-veyt)

(1) To make worse or more severe; intensify, as anything evil, disorderly, or troublesome.

(2) To annoy; irritate; exasperate.

(3) In law (as aggravated), a class of criminal offence made worse by the circumstances of commission.

1425–1430: From late Middle English aggravate (make heavy, burden down), from the Latin aggravātus, past participle of aggravāre (to render more troublesome (literally to make heavy or heavier, add to the weight of)), the construct being ad- (to) + gravare (add to; to make heavy), from gravis (heavy), from the primitive Indo-European root gwere- (heavy).  The earlier English verb was the late fourteenth century aggrege (make heavier or more burdensome; make more oppressive; increase, intensify, from the Old French agreger.  Aggravate is a verb, aggravated & aggravative are adjectives, aggravator is a noun and aggravating a verb.

The adjective aggravated (increased, magnified) dates from the 1540s, the meaning "irritated" noted first in 1611 while that of "made worse" is from the 1630s.  In the late fifteenth century, aggravate had operated as an adjective in the sense if "threatened", from the Latin past participle.  The verb reaggravate dates from the 1610s and meant "to make still heavier" (a sense now obsolete), the construct re- (in this context "again") + aggravate. The word was re-purposed in the late fifteenth century as a past-participle adjective meaning "censured a second time" which, in the hands of lawyers, predictably begat reaggravated, reaggravating & reaggravation.  The adjective aggravating (making worse or more heinous (and implied in aggravatingly) emerged in the 1670s as the present-participle adjective the verb.  The phrase “aggravating circumstances” was in use by the late eighteenth century, building on the weakened sense of "provoking, annoying" which dates from 1775.  The earlier adjective in the sense "troublesome, causing difficulty" was the mid fifteenth century Middle English aggravaunt.

The literal sense in English (make heavier) has been long obsolete, the modern meanings (1) "to make a bad thing worse" dates from the 1590s while (2) the colloquial sense (to exasperate or annoy) is from 1611.  So, although it’s annoyed (though not aggravated) pedants and usage mavens for centuries, the meaning "to annoy or exasperate” has been in continuous use since the sixteenth century.  There are sources which note the later meaning emerged within twenty years of the first but it’s a highly technical point of definition and the original meaning, “to make worse” did have roots in Classical Latin.  Henry Fowler (1858-1933) in his authoritative Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) was emphatic in saying aggravate has properly only one meaning: “to make (an evil) worse or more serious” and that to “use it in the sense of annoy or exasperate is a vulgarism that should be left to the uneducated.”  Henry Fowler was always a model of clarity.  He was also a realist and acknowledged “usage has beaten the grammarians” and that condemnation of the vulgarism had “become a fetish.  The meaning “to annoy” is now so ubiquitous that it should be thought correct; that’s how the democratic, unregulated English language works.  However, for the fastidious, it may be treated in the same way as the split infinitive, something tolerated in casual but not formal discourse and certainly never in writing.

Aggravated offences in law

In the criminal law of common law jurisdictions, aggravated offences (assault, burglary et al) are those made worse by the circumstances in which they’re committed.  The aggravating conditions can be the intent of the perpetrator, a heightened vulnerability of the victim, the location of the offence or even the time of day.

In 2013, the Ugandan parliament considered the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, which created two offences, (1) Homosexuality (being caught in the act; punishable by twelve months imprisonment) and (2) Aggravated Homosexuality (being caught a second time for which the death penalty applied).  However, even Kampala politicians thought that a bit much and substituted life sentences for hanging.  In 2014, President Yoweri Museveni (b 1944; President of Uganda since 1986) signed the bill into law, noting his decision was based on a report by "medical experts" who had concluded people are not born homosexual and the behavior is a life-style choice like becoming a vegan or joining the Freemasons.

However, in late 2014 the Constitutional Court of Uganda ruled the act invalid on technical grounds, finding it had been adopted without a parliamentary quorum.  Although the government indicated their intention to appeal to the Supreme Court, the attorney-general soon issued a statement that there would be no appeal.  It seems President Museveni had been generally surprised at the vehemence of foreign reaction to the law and it doubtless confirmed his view of homosexuality in Uganda as emblematic of the West’s "social imperialism" in Africa.  The bill has not been has not re-introduced although it seems some parliamentary and public support for such a move does exist.

Parliament in session, Kampala, Uganda, 21 September 2017

Cracking down on the smug.

In early August 2022, it was announced the Ugandan government had suspended the operations of SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda) a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) which had for some years operated as a resource centre, advocating for the rights of sexual minorities.  The Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a press release stating SMUG was continuing to operate despite being neither incorporated with the Ugandan Registration Services Bureau (URSB) nor holding a permit issued by the National Bureau for NGOs (NBNGO) and was therefore “operating illegally”.  SMUG had in 2012 applied for incorporation with the URSB but the application had been rejected on the grounds they were “undesirable”.

Of black & white; right & wrong.  The SMUG once used a logo with a white figure holding aloft a banner with the rainbow colors of the LGBTQQIAAOP in front of a group of black figures.  That was a bad idea and quickly it was replaced with one in which all the figures were rendered in black, the concern presumably that the original might confirm President Museveni's suspicion that gaynessness was an example of Western social imperialism being imposed on Africa.