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Provoke   /prəvˈoʊk/   Listen
verb
Provoke  v. t.  (past & past part. provoked; pres. part. provoking)  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." "Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." "Such acts Of contumacy will provoke the Highest To make death in us live." "Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust?" "To the poet the meaning is what he pleases to make it, what it provokes in his own soul."
Synonyms: To irritate; arouse; stir up; awake; excite; incite; anger. See Irritate.



Provoke  v. i.  
1.
To cause provocation or anger.
2.
To appeal. Note: (A Latinism) (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Provoke" Quotes from Famous Books



... tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered, or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,—to be subjected to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... of sight of the world's sharp eyes, Jay Gardiner and his wife used each other with the scantest possible courtesy. He never descended to the vulgarity of having words with her, though she did her utmost to provoke him to quarrel, saying to herself that anything was better than that dead calm, that haughty way he had of completely ignoring her in his ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... from Prussia. Frederick showed his hatred of England by forbidding some German troops which George had hired to pass through his dominions; but his quarrel with Austria with reference to the Bavarian succession rendered him unwilling to provoke Great Britain: he had no sympathy with the Americans and would ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... to provoke her, by reviling the absent Posthumus, her indignation heightens her scorn, and her scorn sets a keener edge on ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... the course of literary debate, a man lowers his estimation in the public eye by engaging in such controversy, that, since I have been dipped in ink, I have suffered no personal attacks (and I have been honored with them of all descriptions) to provoke me to reply. A man will certainly be vexed on such occasions, and I have wished to have the knaves where the muircock was the bailie—or, as you would say, upon the sod—but I never let the thing cling to my mind, and always adhered ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart


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