Tease vs Irritate - What's the difference?
tease | irritate |
To separate the fibres of a fibrous material.
To comb (originally with teasels) so that the fibres all lie in one direction.
To back-comb.
To poke fun at.
To provoke or disturb; to annoy.
* (1800-1859)
*:Hesuffered them to tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations.
*1684 , , (Hudibras)
*:Not by the force of carnal reason, / But indefatigable teasing .
*
*:"My tastes," he said, still smiling, "incline me to the garishly sunlit side of this planet." And, to tease her and arouse her to combat: "I prefer a farandole to a nocturne; I'd rather have a painting than an etching; Mr. Whistler bores me with his monochromatic mud; I don't like dull colours, dull sounds, dull intellects;."
To entice, to tempt.
(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)
