EXACERBATION

 I hate that word. I know it's what happened to me this week but there just ought to be a better way to describe it. Exacerbation! It's five syllables long, it's hard to say, and it sounds like something you'd be embarrassed to admit to your mother.

Just picture this scenario:

Mom: "What are you doing?"
 
Reply: "Oh, uh, I didn't see you come in.   I was uh, just, you know, exacerbating."

I've been a heavy and compulsive reader since I was a child. With all of my reading, I don't remember encountering this word until very recent years. Now it seems to be the only word some highly educated people can think of to say that something has gotten worse than it was.
   "The political situation has exacerbated..."
   "Overnight, the battle exacerbated and..."

The first syllable of this word starts with a back of the throat k sound, (always a strong and threatening sound - think KKK) with a quick transition to a front of the mouth hissss. There's kind of a reptilian association there and our culture generally doesn't deal too well with snakes and such. We're off to a bad start already and now we're going to follow that up with another immediate hisss and now we have "ekss asss." Now at this point, we seem to lose some of our assurance and add a pause type of sound - er and that brings us up to "ekss asss er." We can't admit to our indecision because of the strong beginning so now it's time to throw in an explosive b sound - BAY, and that bring us all the way to "ekss asss er BAY." That hardly seems like a proper ending so let's add something soft and melodic like "shunnn" to minimize preceding harshness. Outside of m, the n sound is about the only non-vowel sound in our language that can be drawn out like humming. Now we finally have the whole word that says we're not breathing as well as we did last week - "ekss asss er BAY shunnn. Sounds almost evangelical with that nnnn sound on the end, doesn't it?

I've always been opposed to the idea of a word being considered bad. That whole concept has a pagan association that implies words have some sort of magic power. That leads into "secret names" whereby other people can impact on your life simply by speaking your secret name. Some words become so powerful that just saying them will assure success or failure of a project. In this particular instance, I'm willing to make an exception. Exacerbation is a BAD WORD!

When I was taking photographs of children, the first thing I did was have my assistant get the mother distracted so she wouldn't be "helping" me get a smile on her child's face. You know, "Smile for the man. No, not like that, your real smile." I would then ask the child (this worked well with children aged 2 - 5) if they would say a real hard word for me. This would usually generate a puzzled expression. The word I always asked them to say was hippopotamus. It is a hard word for a small child but it's also one they've heard. I got variations all the way from hoppopittamus to something very close to hippopotomus and always got a big smile of pride because no matter how they said it, they were convinced they had been successful. Now, just try to imagine the expression I would have gotten from a three year old if I asked him/her to say exacerbation.

Come on, people. This disease we live with is difficult enough without using an ugly word to describe what's happened to us. Surely there is a softer, perhaps gentler word out there to describe the bad episodes we sometimes experience. If we can't use this word with a three year old, maybe we shouldn't be using it at all.

Dick in Missouri