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)

Verb

(head)

(aggravate)

Verb

(aggravat)

To make worse, or more severe; to render less tolerable or less excusable; to make more offensive; to enhance; to intensify.

To aggravate my woes. —

To aggravate the horrors of the scene. —.

The defense made by the prisoner's counsel did rather aggravate than extenuate his crime. —Addison.

To give coloring to in description; to exaggerate; as, to aggravate circumstances. — .

To exasperate; to provoke, to irritate.

* 1748 , (Samuel Richardson), Clarissa :

If both were to aggravate her parents, as my brother and sister do mine.

* {{quote-book, year=1905, author=

, title= , chapter=1 citation , passage=“It is a pity,” he retorted with aggravating meekness, “that they do not use a little common sense. The case resembles that of Columbus' egg, and is every bit as simple. […]”}}

* 1977 , (Alistair Horne), A Savage War of Peace , New York Review Books 2006, p. 85:

Ben Bella was aggravated by having to express himself in French because the Egyptians were unable to understand his Arabic.