Bush’s first post-election vocabulary blunder
Bush’s first grammatical faux pax of his second term as president! He gets ‘exacerbated’ by the press constantly berating his political and intellectual IQ… i believe the word should be exasperated.
So i just watched Bush’s first press conference of the second term, and i’ve decided to let all of my qualms go. everything will be fine, b/c as Bush constantly makes us aware, he ‘understands’ things. he believed things before and he ‘still believes’ in what he said. and if you question how he might achieve things such as slashing the budget deficit or fixing public education, he’ll just refer you to things he’s done, such as the ‘no child left behind act’ (a winner, that one) and the budget that was just submitted to congress which will apparently slash the deficit by half in 5 years.
what really makes him so aggravating, to me at least, is the way he answers questions. he speaks as though everything that has occurred during his administration was foreseen, and they had and have game plans for everything. you question me on this, well let me just refer you to that. i believe i answered that with a one-liner that was broad enough to claim jesus returned from the grave.
If you are questioning his vocabulary, you should make sure that you are correcting something that is incorrect.
Main Entry: ex·ac·er·bate
Pronunciation: ig-‘za-s&r-“bAt
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -bat·ed; -bat·ing
Etymology: Latin exacerbatus, past participle of exacerbare, from ex- + acerbus harsh, bitter, from acer sharp — more at EDGE
: to make more violent, bitter, or severe
Also, his second term doesn’t begin until January.
true, his second term didn’t start until january. and i was wrong to call it a grammatical faux pax, but it was still a misuse of the word. to exacerbate is to make a situation worse. you don’t personally get exacerbated by people questioning your skills. you get exasperated.