 |
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Provoke \Pro*voke"\, verb (used with an object) [imp. & p. p. {Provoked}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Provoking}.] [F. provoquer, L. provocare to call forth; pro forth + vocare to call, fr. vox, vocis, voice, cry, call. See {Voice}.] To call forth; to call into being or action; esp., to incense to action, a faculty or passion, as love, hate, or ambition; hence, commonly, to incite, as a person, to action by a challenge, by taunts, or by defiance; to exasperate; to irritate; to offend intolerably; to cause to retaliate.
Obey his voice, provoke him not. --Ex. xxiii. 21.
Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. --Eph. vi. 4.
Such acts Of contumacy will provoke the Highest To make death in us live. --Milton.
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust? --Gray.
To the poet the meaning is what he pleases to make it, what it provokes in his own soul. -- J. Burroughs.
Syn: To irritate; arouse; stir up; awake; excite; incite; anger. See {Irritate}.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
provoked
adjective: incited, especially deliberately, to anger; "aggravated by passive resistance"; "the provoked animal attacked the child" [syn: {aggravated}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
42 Moby Thesaurus words for "provoked": aggravated, amplified, angry, annoyed, augmented, bothered, browned-off, bugged, burnt-up, chafed, deliberately provoked, disturbed, embittered, enhanced, enlarged, exacerbated, exasperated, galled, griped, heated up, heightened, hotted up, huffy, increased, intensified, irked, irritated, magnified, miffed, nettled, peeved, piqued, put-out, resentful, riled, roiled, ruffled, soured, troubled, vexed, worse, worsened
 |
Definitions retrieved from local copies of the freely distributed DICT client/server software and databases. Click here for database copyright information. - KM |