Modifying Another Word

• exceptionally: Cold Weather Payments - Payment made during a period of exceptionally severe weather to vulnerable households on Income Support or Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance.

• unusually: Each of the target countries has experienced unusually severe climatic conditions in recent years, often with life-changing consequences.

• particularly: Education The impact of AIDS is particularly severe on children's education.

• quite: With some chemotherapy drugs, it can be quite severe.

• potentially: The people are already extremely vulnerable and any military action could exacerbate this, with potentially severe and lasting humanitarian consequences.

• unduly: Even when you're on his side, the tone sometimes feels unduly severe.

Infinitive complement

• interfere: Up to 15 % of women have period pains severe enough to interfere with their daily activities.

• require: Frequently bleeding may be severe enough to require transfusion despite local treatment such as cautery, estrogen therapy or even catheter thromboembolism.

• affect: The condition is not infectious and is not usually severe enough to affect general health.

Modifies a noun

• pain: The proportion with severe pain on movement fell from 37 % to 12 % .

• illness: The virus caused severe respiratory illness in 18 people, 6 of whom died.

• impairment: People with a severe impairment or who are totally blind may rely on screen reading software to access Web information.

• headache: A dramatic increase in blood pressure occurs, causing symptoms such as severe headache and sweating.

• depression: The Novice was admitted to Hospital for two nights, suffering from severe depression.

• shortage: The early 1960s had seen severe food shortages across the whole of India.

Used with adjective complement

• become: They occur more frequently or become more severe during times of emotional stress.

• seem: The concept of hell and its eternal fires seems too severe a punishment for any arbitrary decision.

• cause: The " glue " keeping the skin together present in normal births is missing causing severe blistering either spontaneously or at the slightest friction.

• have: I had severe Chicken Pox, which I caught from my son Matthew, prior to the conception of my second son, Henry.

• get: If the stress gets too severe, the body suffers overload and locks the stress into itself in lines of tension and contraction.