GRAV Flashcards
GRAV
GRAV comes from the Latin word meaning “heavy, weighty, serious.” Gravity is, of course, what makes things heavy, and without it there wouldn’t be any life on earth, since nothing would stay on earth at all. This doesn’t stop us from yelling in outrage when the familiar laws of gravity cause something to drop to the floor and break.
grave
grave (1) Requiring serious thought or concern. (2) Serious and formal in appearance or manner.
• We realized that the situation was grave and that the slightest incident could spark all-out war.
Gravity has a familiar physical meaning but also a nonphysical meaning— basically “seriousness.” Thus, something grave possesses gravity. You can refer to the gravity of a person’s manner, though public figures today seem to have a lot less gravity than they used to have. Or you can talk about a grave situation, as in the example sentence. But even though Shakespeare makes a pun on grave when a dying character talks about being buried the next day (“Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”), the word meaning “hole for burying a body” isn’t actually related.
gravitas
gravitas Great or very dignified seriousness.
• The head of the committee never failed to carry herself with the gravitas she felt was appropriate to her office.
This word comes to us straight from Latin. Among the Romans, gravitas was thought to be essential to the character and functions of any adult (male) in authority. Even the head of a household or a low-level official would strive for this important quality. We use gravitas today to identify the same solemn dignity in men and women, but it seems to come easier in those who are over 60, slow-moving—and a bit overweight.
gravitate
gravitate To move or be drawn toward something, especially by natural tendency or as if by an invisible force.
• On hot evenings, the town’s social life gravitated toward the lakefront, where you could stroll the long piers eating ice cream or dance at the old Casino.
To gravitate is to respond, almost unconsciously, to a force that works like gravity to draw things steadily to it as if by their own weight. Thus, young people gravitate toward a role model, moths gravitate to a flame, a conversation might gravitate toward politics, and everyone at a party often gravitates to the bar.
aggravate
aggravate (1) To make (an injury, problem, etc.) more serious or severe. (2) To annoy or bother.
• She went back to the soccer team before the knee was completely healed, which naturally aggravated the injury.
Since the grav- root means basically “weighty or serious,” the original meaning of aggravate was “to make more serious.” A bad relationship with your parents can be aggravated by marrying someone who nobody likes, for example, or a touchy trade relationship between two countries can be aggravated by their inability to agree on climate-change issues. Depression can be aggravated by insomnia—and insomnia can be aggravated by
depression. But when most people use aggravate today, they employ its “annoy” sense, as in “What really aggravates my dad is having to listen to that TV all day long.”
