I use the word “exacerbate” way too much and unlike some of my other pet phrases (like “a li’l”, “on the cinder”, “the life-changing magic of”, and “probably better known as”) it’s starting to sound weird to me now.
It’s too fancy and weird and specific of a word to be jammed three times into every essay. Normally I try to not put the same word or phrase twice in the same paragraph (I don’t always catch it for first publication but I go back and edit older essays all the time and this is one of the things I’m always on the hunt for) or even in the same essay if it’s something that’s really out there, pet phrase or no.
The reason for this is that I’m Swedish, I think in a weird mixture of Lisp, English, and Swedish, and in Sweden saying something has made something else worse isn’t some strange X-laden Latin word, it’s just common-place words like “förvärra” or “försämra”.
I like to be specific and not say something “caused” something else when I’m not sure whether or not it did. For example, maybe it’s not money’s fault that people actually are evil (although saint Paul wrote that love for money was the root of all evil in his first letter to Timothy), maybe money just rewards and exaggerates and spreads and… exacerbates it.