Word.ws English Dictionary

acerbating

acerbating is the present participle and gerund of acerbate.

Meaning of acerbate

Verb

acerbate (third-person singular simple present acerbates, present participle acerbating, simple past and past participle acerbated)

  1. (transitive) To exasperate; to irritate.
    • Lady Laura had triumphed; but she had no desire to acerbate her husband by any unpalatable allusion to her victory.1869, Anthony Trollope, chapter 51, in Phineas Finn
    Synonyms:
    provoke
  2. (transitive) To make bitter or sour.
    Synonyms:
    sour, embitter

See all 3 meanings of acerbate

Questions about acerbating

What is acerbating the present participle and gerund of?
Acerbating is the present participle and gerund of acerbate.

Words near acerbating in the dictionary

  1. aceratheriins
  2. acerb
  3. acerbate
  4. acerbated
  5. acerbates
  6. acerbating
  7. acerbation
  8. acerbations
  9. acerber
  10. acerbest
  11. acerbic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: acerbating (page history and authors); acerbate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “acerbating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/acerbating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.