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)

Verb

(exasperat)

To frustrate, vex, provoke, or annoy; to make angry.

* , Macbeth , act 3, sc. 6:

this report

Hath so exasperate the king that he

Prepares for some attempt of war.

* 1851 , , Moby Dick , ch. 3:

The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.

* 1853 , , Bleak House , ch. 11:

Beadle goes into various shops and parlours, examining the inhabitants; always shutting the door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy, exasperating the public.

* 1987 , " Woman of the Year: Corazon Aquino," Time , 5 Jan:

[S]he exasperates her security men by acting as if she were protected by some invisible shield.

* 2007 , " Loyal Mail," Times Online (UK), 4 June (retrieved 7 Oct 2010):

News that Adam Crozier, Royal Mail chief executive, is set to receive a bumper bonus will exasperate postal workers.