Which one of the following options most appropriately describes the phrase “exacerbating labour shortages” ?

Correct — B, (b) Worsening the problem of labour shortages.

To exacerbate is to make an existing bad situation worse. The word comes from Latin exacerbare, to irritate or embitter, from acerbus, harsh - and that origin is still audible in the way English uses it. The object of 'exacerbate' is almost always a problem, an illness, a tension or a shortage: something already unwelcome, which the new factor aggravates. You exacerbate a wound, a crisis, a rivalry; you do not exacerbate a harvest or a profit.

Read the sentence the phrase sits in: 'It is well-known that in the developed world the number of people of working age will decline, exacerbating labour shortages.' Two things are in play. There is an existing condition - labour shortages in the developed world - and there is a new development, the fall in the working-age population, which makes that condition more severe. Option (b) states exactly that relationship: it names the shortages as a problem and the effect as worsening it.

The item asks which option 'most appropriately describes the phrase', which is a request for the best gloss and not merely for a defensible one. Option (b) carries both halves of the word's meaning - the direction of change and the fact that what is changing is already a difficulty - while the nearest rival carries only the first half. That is what makes it the better answer rather than simply an acceptable one.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Increasing labour shortages — This is a real near-miss and deserves a straight account. Exacerbating labour shortages does make them greater, so 'increasing labour shortages' is not a false description of what happens; a candidate who chooses it has not misunderstood the sentence. It is nonetheless the weaker gloss, for two reasons. First, 'increase' is a neutral verb of quantity that takes any object at all - profits, temperatures, speed - and so loses the one thing 'exacerbate' insists on, that the thing being made greater is already a problem. Second, the item asks for the option that most appropriately describes the phrase, so where one option captures a word's full sense and another captures a part of it, the fuller one wins. Option (b) says both that the shortages grow and that they are a difficulty growing worse.
• (c)Mitigating the issue of labour shortages — To mitigate is to make less severe - to soften, ease or alleviate - and it is the standard antonym of exacerbate in exactly the contexts where both are used, so this option is the passage's meaning reversed. The sentence would then read that a fall in the working-age population eases labour shortages, which is not only the opposite of the English but the opposite of the argument the paragraph is building: the passage is explaining why rich countries will need workers from elsewhere, and that case collapses if their shortages are being relieved. An option that inverts a passage's logic can usually be struck out without knowing the underlined word at all.
• (d)Intractably unburdening labour shortages — This option is built from two words that do not sit together and do not fit the sentence. To unburden is to relieve of a load, which points the same way as 'mitigate' and therefore the wrong way; and 'intractably' means in a manner not easily managed or cured, an adverb that belongs to problems that resist solution rather than to acts of relief. The result is a phrase that contradicts itself - a relieving that cannot be managed - and reads as an attempt to sound learned. Options assembled from impressive vocabulary that will not combine are worth reading twice for exactly this reason.

A gloss item asks for the sense a word carries in the sentence in front of you, and the useful distinction is between a word's direction and its colouring.

Direction is the easy half. Exacerbate points upward: more, greater, more severe. Any option pointing downward - mitigate, alleviate, ease, unburden, allay, assuage - is out at once, which on this item removes two of the four.

Colouring is where items of this kind are actually decided. Some verbs of increase are neutral about their object (increase, raise, expand, augment); others carry a judgement about it. Exacerbate belongs to the second group: it presupposes that its object is a bad thing. So does aggravate, and so, in a different way, does compound - one compounds an error or a loss, not a benefit. When a passage chooses one of these loaded verbs, the loading is part of what the author has said, and a gloss that drops it has given up information.

The practical rule for such items: eliminate on direction first, then choose on colouring. If two options survive both filters, prefer the one that could be substituted into the sentence without changing its tone. 'A decline in working-age numbers, worsening the problem of labour shortages' preserves the author's meaning entirely; 'a decline in working-age numbers, increasing labour shortages' preserves the arithmetic and loses the judgement.

Key facts

• Exacerbate means to make an existing bad situation worse; it descends from Latin exacerbare, from acerbus meaning harsh or bitter, and its object is almost always a problem, a pain, a tension or a shortage.
• The sentence in the passage supplies both halves of the meaning: labour shortages already exist in the developed world, and the decline in the working-age population is what makes them more severe.
• Mitigate is the standard antonym of exacerbate - to make less severe - so an option built on it reverses the passage's argument about why rich countries will need workers from elsewhere.
• 'Increase' is a neutral verb of quantity that takes any object; 'exacerbate' is a loaded verb that presupposes its object is unwelcome, which is the whole distance between the two candidate answers here.
• The stem asks for the option that most appropriately describes the phrase, which is a request for the best gloss rather than for any defensible one - a formula EPFO uses when two options are close.

Common traps

• Choosing 'increasing' because exacerbate does mean to increase; it is right about direction and silent about the fact that the object is already a problem.
• Glossing the word out of context, when the Directions tie the answer to the passage and the passage supplies the pre-existing difficulty the word needs.
• Being drawn to the most elaborate option; on this item the elaborate one combines an adverb of intractability with a verb of relief and means nothing coherent.
• Missing that 'mitigate' would break the passage's argument, which is a way of striking it out without knowing the tested word at all.
• Treating 'most appropriately' as decoration; it is the instruction that decides an item where two options are both defensible.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the sentence 'The collapse of the monsoon aggravated an already severe shortage of fodder', the word 'aggravated' most nearly means :

  • (a)annoyed
  • (b)made worse
  • (c)relieved
  • (d)prolonged

  Answer(b) made worse - aggravate, like exacerbate, means to worsen an existing bad situation. 'Annoyed' is the word's colloquial sense applied to people, not to a shortage; 'relieved' reverses it; and 'prolonged' describes duration rather than severity.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following sentences uses 'exacerbate' correctly ?

  • (a)The new pension rules exacerbated the confusion at the counter
  • (b)The good monsoon exacerbated the yield of paddy this season
  • (c)The scheme was designed to exacerbate the distress of the unemployed
  • (d)Her promotion exacerbated the family's fortunes

  Answer(a) The new pension rules exacerbated the confusion at the counter - confusion is a difficulty, which is the kind of object exacerbate takes. In (b) and (d) the object is a good outcome, and in (c) the sentence says a scheme was designed to make distress worse, which reverses the intended sense of a relief measure.