This is one I'm seeing more and more often. The word you were after is "exacerbate". It's my hope that exasperate and exacerbate won't suffer the same fate as literally and figuratively, which now mean the same thing:
Yes, which is why I posted my correction -- it met that criterion.
In addition if we are going to be rigourously accurate I will point out that merriam-webster also has exasperate down as "to make more grievous" as an obsolete meaning and since you seem to be concerned about changing the meaning of words over time we should perhaps allow the obsolete usage here.
If you had posted a flawed math equation, or a defective computer program snippet, would you make the same objection to a correction? Would a mathematical correction offered in good faith merit this criticism, or would it be welcomed as a useful contribution?
The answer is obvious -- spoken and written language is to a human what computer programming language is to a computer. Both should be open to correction. And for some reason I cannot fathom, one of them is welcomed and the other criticized, as though biological processors should be treated differently than silicon processors.
> In addition if we are going to be rigourously accurate I will point out that merriam-webster ...
Dictionaries don't prescribe, they describe. No matter how bizarre a word usage, if it appears in publications, it finds its way into the dictionary. So it's not a substantive argument to point out that a word meaning appears in a dictionary -- all of them end up there.
Source: OED
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate
"to destroy a large number of (plants, animals, people, etc.)"
But for exasperate as a replacement for exacerbate, that's more of a stretch. Not to say it won't happen.