Verb

(irritat)

(lb) To provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure.

*

*:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

(lb) To introduce irritability or irritation in.

(lb) To cause or induce displeasure or irritation.

(lb) To induce pain in (all or part of a body or organism).

(lb) To render null and void.

:(Archbishop Bramhall)

Verb

(head)

(provoke)

Verb

(provok)

to cause someone to become annoyed or angry.

Don't provoke the dog; it may try to bite you.

* Bible, Eph. vi. 4

Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

to bring about a reaction.

* J. Burroughs

To the poet the meaning is what he pleases to make it, what it provokes in his own soul.

*{{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=November 12 , author= , title=International friendly: England 1-0 Spain , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=Spain were provoked into a response and Villa almost provided a swift equaliser when he rounded Hart but found the angle too acute and could only hit the side-netting.}}

(obsolete) To appeal.

(Dryden)