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noun
Irritation  n.  
1.
The act of irritating, or exciting, or the state of being irritated; excitement; stimulation, usually of an undue and uncomfortable kind; especially, excitement of anger or passion; provocation; annoyance; anger. "The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect."
2.
(Physiol.) The act of exciting, or the condition of being excited to action, by stimulation; as, the condition of an organ of sense, when its nerve is affected by some external body; esp., the act of exciting muscle fibers to contraction, by artificial stimulation; as, the irritation of a motor nerve by electricity; also, the condition of a muscle and nerve, under such stimulation.
3.
(Med.) A condition of morbid excitability or oversensitiveness of an organ or part of the body; a state in which the application of ordinary stimuli produces pain or excessive or vitiated action.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Irritation" Quotes from Famous Books



... look with suspicion on any vessel coming thence which might fall into their hands, however much her commander might endeavour to make of his official certificate declaring the Governor's "full belief" in his lawful intentions. The irritation caused by the use that was being made of Sydney as a privateering and contraband base of operations can be well imagined. As early as December, 1799, indeed, Governor Hunter related that a captured Spanish merchant vessel had been brought into port, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... will show anger or irritation only in rare cases, and then by design: he will know his men individually and be as considerate of them as possible, ready to do himself what he asks to have done; just in administering punishments; clear ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... people sought to impose upon him. It is worth noting, for its bearing upon controversies soon to be encountered in this narrative, that forty-eight hours had not elapsed after Mr. Adams had taken his seat before he ventured upon a display of independence which caused much irritation to his Federalist associates. He had the hardihood to propose that the Federalist majority in the legislature should permit the Republican minority to enjoy a proportional representation in the council. "It was the first ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... and obeying directions covering details, large and small, which in the past have been left to his individual judgment. At first the workmen can see nothing in all of this but red tape and impertinent interference, and time must be allowed them to recover from their irritation, not only at this, but at every stage in their upward march. If they have been classed together and paid uniform wages for each class, the better men should be singled out and given higher wages so that they shall distinctly recognize ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... irritable part. Now as their situation after being exposed to external violence resembles their sleep, but with a greater degree of collapse, may it not be owing to a numbness or paralysis consequent to too violent irritation, like the faintings of animals from pain or fatigue? I kept a sensitive plant in a dark room till some hours after day-break: its leaves and leaf-stalks were collapsed as in its most profound sleep, and on exposing it to the light, above twenty minutes passed before the plant was thoroughly ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... them identify themselves with inanimate objects, or in a few moments run through every gamut of color. Some of great nervous activity, make themselves absolutely immovable and contract, filling themselves with wrinkles, taking on the dark tone of the rocks. Others in moments of irritation or amorous fever, cover themselves with streaks of light and tremulous spots, different colored clouds passing over their epidermis with every thrill. The cuttlefish and ink fish, upon perceiving that they are pursued, enwrap themselves in a cloud of invisibility, just ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... been a well-wisher to the Republic, and if I had any influence with the President I would advise him no longer to sit on the boiler to prevent it from bursting. Some safety-valves are required for the activities of the new population. In their irritation they abuse the Government, often unjustly, in the press, and send petitions to the Queen, but that was only to be expected. Let the Transvaal Legislature give them a liberal franchise and allow them local self-government for their towns ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... craytures and don't yez be scairt! Have yez batin' and lumberin' thumps at the hairt, Wid ossification, and acceleration, Wid fatty accretion and bad vellication, Wid liver inflation and hapitization, Wid lung inflammation and brain-adumbration, Wid black aruptation and schirrhous formation, Wid nerve irritation and paralyzation, Wid extravasation and acrid sacration, Wid great jactitation and exacerbation, Wid shtrong palpitation and wake circulation, Wid quare titillation and cowld perspiration? Be the powers! but I'll ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... your mind to it, dear, if you get a good cook, she's wasteful or she's lazy, or she's irritable, or dirty, or she won't wait on table, or she slips out at night, and laughs under street lamps with some man or other! She's always on your mind, and she's always an irritation." ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris

... could not miss the tenderness and sympathy in Hugh's face; and the boy's hand was still pressing with friendly insistence on his shoulder. There was something so boyishly frank, so clean and honest about Hugh that his irritation melted into confidence; and ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... His irritation had all died away. His tone was one of indescribable depression, and his great black eyes were fixed on Robert with a melancholy which startled his companion. By a subtle transition Elsmere felt himself touched with a pang of profound pity ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... you stand like that?' I heard her say in a tone of great irritation. 'And why do you stare into that bowl? Do you think I mean to leave that child to walk these halls after I am carried out of them forever? Do you measure my hate by such a petty yard-stick as that? I tell you that I would rot above ground ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... better ask Mr. William Murray Bradshaw yourself about that," she answered. She felt the hook now, and her spines were rising, partly with apprehension, partly with irritation. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... took up his home in one of the wings of the chateau. Here he spent the most profitable years of his artistic life. His twelve Symphonic Poems, his Faust and Dante Symphonies, his Hungarian Rhapsodies, and many other important works, including also literary compositions, he achieved here. The irritation he had felt at the superficial meddling, and domineering criticism of his would-be Muse, the Comtesse d'Agoult, was changed to such a communion as the old Roman king Numa enjoyed with ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... but while he yet looked the features would distort themselves into the vivid expression of some contemptible trait, so like what he had seen in reality, during the evening, that, in uncontrollable irritation, he would start ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... her short happiness. She knew that through the church door lay the only road to her duty and peace of mind. To see that the first happy impression had lasted barely half an hour, and instead of bringing peace, had brought irritation, was cause enough to alarm the most courageous young woman who ever rushed into the maelstrom ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... lands, which the Nation offered to any one who would cultivate them, had mostly been taken up; the immigrant who had been a laborer in Europe, was a laborer here. Moreover, the political conditions in Europe often added to the burdens and irritation caused by the industrial conditions there. And the immigrant in coming to America brought with him all his grievances, political not less than industrial. He was too ignorant to discriminate; he could only feel. Anarchy and Nihilism, which were his natural reaction against his despotic ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... varied and vacillated with insolent caprice, I have really remained, in my own heart and to my own conscience, true to my first sensations and my first convictions. I can only implore you not to condemn me to a life of disappointment and misery, by judging me with hasty irritation. Favor me, so far at least, as to relate the conversation which has passed between us to your two daughters. Let me hear how it affects each of them towards me. Let me know what they are willing to think and ready to do under such unparalleled circumstances ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... transient visits to their native countries to the performance of military service in like manner as resident subjects. Complaints arising from the claim in this respect made by foreign states have heretofore been matters of controversy between the United States and some of the European powers, and the irritation consequent upon the failure to settle this question increased during the war in which Prussia, Italy, and Austria were recently engaged. While Great Britain has never acknowledged the right of expatriation, she has not for some years past practically insisted upon the opposite doctrine. France ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson

... houses; Fort St. George had taken one side, Pondicherry the other; and in a series of battles and sieges the troops of Lawrence and Clive had been opposed to those of Dupleix. A struggle less important in its consequences, but not less likely to produce irritation, was carried on between those French and English adventurers who kidnapped negroes and collected gold dust on the coast of Guinea. But it was in North America that the emulation and mutual aversion of the two nations were most conspicuous. The French attempted ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... at reasonable rates. Bombay is about five days by steamer from Basra. It was almost a universal experience to find alcohol necessary in the evening. The mind was exhausted, food was unattractive, conversation was impossible, the passage of time immeasurably slow, and a restless irritation pervaded one until a dose of alcohol was taken. Its effect was humanising. Still, it is worth remembering that the Prophet forbade alcohol to the people of the country. But then he permitted ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... however, all irritation should subside, and no suffering or distress of any kind, whether general or local, should attend upon the performance of this important function. The presence of suffering now becomes indicative of disease. Of this ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... executive Hold Seldonskip and bid him hence to speed. But sometimes action swift doth breed regreet; An as I on the future cogitate, Methinks excuses which might satisfy Uninterested minds may weakly fail To ease paternal irritation, when Its offspring, bearing hence a varnished tale Of wrongs which from imagination's womb Were born and yet with specious sound do ring. Hence I must speedily with subtle skill Frame a dispatch which like to plaster kind May ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... the taste, and, as has been shown, highly charged with carbonic acid gas; its action is diuretic, laxative and stimulative to the entire digestive tract. Eminent physicians claim that it is beneficial in dyspepsia, torpid liver, kidney and bladder irritation, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... above mentioned articles to pass. He will find formidable adversaries from Amsterdam, who are firmly resolved on an absolute negative on these two points. A certain great personage, and the Grand Pentionary, are already prepossessed on the subject. The irritation against the English gains also in some of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... sons and daughters,—until now our mankind has got itself into such a chronic state of colic, that even Dr. Carlyle declares himself unable to prescribe any Morrison's Pill or other remedial measure to allay the irritation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... Vicious with irritation, Malcourt laid his hand on the girl's arm: "Take it from me, Dolly, that's the sort of citizen who'll sneak around to call ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... irritation caused among the Dissenters by his Shortest Way, did not prevent him from shocking them and annoying the high Tories by similar jeux d'esprit. He had no tenderness for the feelings of such of his brethren as had not his own robust sense ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... you should remember that this always has the effect of removing the natural oils and is inclined to leave the colon in an irritated condition. A saline solution is to be especially commended where there is a serious catarrhal condition of the intestines, or where there is much inflammation or irritation, such as might be manifested in extreme cases by bloody stools. For a normal saline solution use one teaspoonful of ordinary salt to a quart of water, or four teaspoonfuls to a four-quart enema. Glycerin is frequently suggested, but it is not to be generally recommended. ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... otherwise. A little knowledge of human nature, and attention to its ordinary workings, might have foreseen that the spirits of the people here were in a state, in which they were more likely to be provoked, than frightened, by haughty deportment. And to fill up the measure of irritation, a proscription of individuals has been substituted in the room of just trial. Can it be believed, that a grateful people will suffer those to be consigned to execution, whose sole crime has been the developing and asserting their rights? Had the Parliament possessed the power of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... all needless irritation. Before his waking, Christina had been at the priest's cell, and had received his last blessings and counsels, and she had, on the way back, exchanged her farewells and tears with her two dearest friends, Barbara Schmidt, and Regina Grundt, confiding to the former her ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... caught them rather sharply at a street corner and Ivy's endeavors to balance her crutches while holding her hat in place renewed her irritation. ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... of these—the greatest by far—is The Scholar-Gipsy. I have read—and that not once only, nor only in the works of unlettered and negligible persons—expressions of irritation at the local Oxonian colour. This is surely amazing. One may not be an Athenian, and never have been at Athens, yet be able to enjoy the local colour of the Phaedrus. One may not be an Italian, and never have been in Italy, yet find the Divina Commedia made not teasing but ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... some irritation; "I starved on literature for a year. Who does live on it, till he gets beyond the necessity of depending on it? There is a lot of humbug talked about it. You can't do anything till you get your name up. Some day I will make a hit, and everybody ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the greatest instruction and enlightenment. Afterwards the friendly relations between the Yale and Berlin professors seem to have changed, and at last Professor Steinthal became so exasperated by the misrepresentations and the overbearing tone of the American linguist, that he, in a moment of irritation, forgot himself so far as to retaliate with the same missiles with which he had been assailed. What the missiles used in such encounters are, may be seen from a few specimens. One could hardly quote them ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... in tones too low for us to hear. A new flush of red in Marilyn's face, however, demonstrated the power in the lash of the other girl's tongue. Werner hurried over to them, not masking his own irritation any too well. Without a word he began rearranging the table, moving it slightly so that while there was no great difference in its position he had yet made a show of satisfying Marilyn. In effect he pleased neither. The two pretty faces closest to the camera were a study ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... point of view, however firmly settled, was still a new and unexplained fact with himself. He contented himself with saying: "The Morrells had nothing whatever to do with it." It was the only thing that occurred to him as worth saying; but it was unfortunate, for it left Nan's irritation without logical support. Naturally that irritation was ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... it should be trimmed short; the scalp kept clean, but not overwashed; and the hair, if naturally dry, lubricated by the foregoing pomade. These must be supplemented, also, by taking care that the head-covering is not too heating, that the rim of the hat is not too hard, and that irritation of the scalp by hard brushes and ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... many characteristic strokes, a symbolic Plant for him, as I proceeded. He heard and saw all this with much interest and distinct comprehension; but when I had done, he shook his head and said: "This is no experiment, this is an idea." I stopped with some degree of irritation; for the point which separated us was most luminously marked by this expression. The opinions in Dignity and Grace again occurred to me; the old grudge was just awakening; but I smothered it, and merely said: "I was ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... getting dusk when she heard Esther come in; she waited eagerly, but the footsteps did not come on to her door. June threw another cushion across the room to keep the other company; it was her chief vent for anger or irritation. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... she felt the mingled kindness and irritation that he always roused in her. He stood in the light of the hall lamp, a fat man, a soft hat pushed to the back of his head, a bag in one hand. His face was weak and good-tempered, his eyes had once been fine but now they were ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... of that irritation which we feel when we believe that we are robbed of a phrase, or a thought, or an image, which we believed to be our own, when we are plagiarized? Robbed? Can it indeed be ours once we have given it to the public? Only because it is ours we prize ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... well-expressed words, he mentioned that he attended, from respect to the British, to offer his services to me on an occasion "which he deeply regretted, but which circumstances unfortunately rendered necessary, and which all parties were doubtless anxious to conclude before it should produce any irritation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... worm is suddenly illuminated and dashes like a rabbit into its burrow—to use the expression employed by a friend—we are at first led to look at the action as a reflex one. The irritation of the cerebral ganglia appears to cause certain muscles to contract in an inevitable manner, independently of the will or consciousness of the animal, as if it were an automaton. But the different effect which a light produced on different occasions, and especially the fact that ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... there was a lightness and an appearance of bright diffidence and humour. But underneath it all was the same as in the common men of all the combatant nations: the hot, seared burn of unbearable experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not to be relieved. The experience gradually cooled on top: but only with a surface crust. The soul did ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... is the sandfly, another enemy of our peace. This creature is not so bad as the first, though. It is true his sting is sharp, and always draws a drop of blood, but there is no after irritation. Sometimes, when sandflies abound about us, we make them contribute to our amusement in moments of leisure. Bets are made, or a pool is formed, and we stretch out our closed fists together and wait. By-and-by a sandfly settles on the back of some one's hand, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... and his gray felt hat set on the back of his shock of black hair at an angle of deep desperation, though patience shone from every line of his strong, gaunt body, and I could see in the half light that there were no lines of irritation about his mouth, which Richard had said looked to him like that of the prophet Hosea, when I had shown him the picture that Father had had snapped of himself and the Crag, with their great string of quail, on one of their hunting-trips, ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... severe lung diseases, Bright's disease, etc., where the patients were so feeble as to require assistance in walking, many of them under medical treatment, and the results have been all that we could ask—no irritation, suffocation, nor depression. We heartily commend it to all as the anaesthetic of the age." Dr. Morrill, of Boston, administered Mayo's anaesthetic to his wife with delightful results when "her lungs were so badly disorganized, that ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various

... Canada," make a wonderful chapter of history. Never was a colony, moreover, so loaded with bounties, so fostered, petted, and protected. The result was absolute paralysis, political and social. When after a century of irritation and skirmishing the French in Canada came to a life-and-death struggle with the self-governing colonists of New England, New York, and Virginia, the result for the French power in America was instant and irretrievable ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... her in sincere surprise] Why? in heaven's name, why? [Reasonably, going to her] Listen to me, Eliza. All this irritation is purely subjective. ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw

... not reply at once; but when she did she had herself well in hand, and every trace of irritation had vanished from ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... Looking again through the articles I had marked as most characteristically his, I saw that they were not only chiefly about ideas and principles but also that they were mostly pure poetry. Chesterton was, I believe, greatest and most permanently effective when he was moved, not by a passing irritation with the things that pass, but by the great emotions evoked by the Eternal, emotions which in Eternity ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... charm would not work, then indeed, as Haridasa says, I might have prevailed: and she might herself have fallen victim to the man who defied her fascination and laughed in her face, out of pique and irritation at her own impotence. And all the more, if what that rascal said have any truth, that she actually took a momentary fancy to me, strange as it seems. But alas! as he said, it ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... mind made up to his course of action, an intense impatience to put his plan into effect, an irritation at the useless twistings and turnings of the car that had latterly become more frequent, took hold upon him. How much longer was this to last! They must have been fully an hour and a half on the road already, and—ah, the car was ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... sulkily, swinging his head in petulant irritation, "I must have meat, no matter where it comes from; I can't starve." There was a covert threat in the Dog-Wolf's voice, but Shag did not notice it—his mind was above that ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser

... position, being eighteen years his senior and at an age when by instinct, habit, and a need of self-encouragement, any tribute from the opposite sex, no matter how given, caused her not the slightest irritation. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... church-vote, which is even then in goodly proportion a retired-farmer vote. The larger the county-seat, the larger the non-church-going population and the more stubborn the fight. The majority of miners and factory workers are on the wet side everywhere. The irritation caused by the gases in the mines, by the dirty work in the blackness, by the squalor in which the company houses are built, turns men to drink for reaction and lamplight and comradeship. The similar fevers and exasperations of factory life lead ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... interests of others. Her mind should be sensitive and alert to the needs of the public. She must love books, but it is equally true that she should be a lover of humanity. If she feels only impatience and irritation when she is asked to leave some routine work to find a special volume for a boy or girl, man or woman worker, or some old person who has come into the library to read, then she should not be ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... this digression, we are next introduced to Giacomo, another of Cenci's hopeful progeny, who, like the rest, has a dreadful tale to unfold of his father's cruelty towards him. Orsino, the favored lover of Beatrice, enters at the moment of his irritation; and by the most artful pleading ultimately incites him to the murder of his father, in which he is to be joined by the rest of the family. The plot, after one unlucky attempt, succeeds; and at the moment of its accomplishment, is discovered by a messenger, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... in the city who least notice the elevated railway are those whose windows it passes. City noises irritate those who come from the country, or the city man on returning to the city from the country, but a similar irritation is felt by the city-bred man on coming to the country. Mr. Dooley's description of a night in the country with the crickets and the mosquitoes and the early birds shows that it is the unusual noise rather than the volume or variety of noises that wreck nerves. At the time of the opening of the New ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... to have to-day. Always a light drinker, it was one of his rules never to touch a drop of liquor during this first stage of the mental working out of any new problem which presented itself. But soft-hearted as he was, he repented of his irritation a moment later and soothed the waiter's wounded feelings by a rich tip. The boy ran out to open the cab door for his strange customer and looked after him, wondering whether the man was a cranky millionaire or merely a poet. For Joseph Muller, ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... the old longshoreman, I am convinced that if he brought his nets home in his lugger he did so because he thought it was the most profitable way of bringing them back. But FitzGerald grew anxious, and his anxiety was not understood by the natural child of the beach, and caused friction and mutual irritation. ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth

... of losing her brothers, yet could not but allow to herself that in many respects she should be more happy when she was freed from anxiety, lest they should get into some scrape, and when her aunt would not be kept in a state of continued irritation and scolding. She felt too that, although she herself could get on well enough in her changed life, that it was very hard indeed for the boys, accustomed as they had been to the jolly and independent life of a public ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... themselves "Lee's Miserables," but grimly stuck to their posts with unshaken faith in their beloved chief who, in the midst of confusion and helplessness, remained calm and resourceful, never displaying irritation, never blaming anyone for mistakes, but courageously attempting to make the best of everything and finding time, in spite of all distractions, for the courtesy and the thoughtfulness ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill

... appeared to give him money. He bowed and closed the door. The driver started his horses and made off at a rapid pace toward the carriage-road down the hill. I watched till the vehicle was out of sight and then drew my head in, giving a low puzzled whistle and forgetting the better part of my irritation in the interest of this new development. Where was the old witch going—and why ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... breakfast, were awaiting the ladies. Individual constitution has much to do with the development of such facts, no doubt; but in this case, appetite carried it hollow over the tender passion; Mr Dombey being very cool and collected, and the Major fretting and fuming in a state of violent heat and irritation. At length the door was thrown open by the Native, and, after a pause, occupied by her languishing along the gallery, a very blooming, but not very ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... our marrying," the young man broke in sharply, glaring with ill-suppressed irritation at Luella, while he softly patted the girl's shoulder. "He begged us on his bended knees to marry, though I don't ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... was conducting sheep to Stamford market, as was his duty every week; therefore in the fading daylight she went along, immersed in her own sad thoughts. Her walk at that hour was entirely aimless. She had only gone forth because of the irritation she felt at her aunt's constant complaints. So entirely engrossed was she by her own despair that she had not noticed the figure of a man who, catching sight of her at the end of Woodnewton village, had held back until she had gone a considerable ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... fire, and the lion seated himself almost like a cat on his hind legs, glaring alternately at them, and at the great boar hams which hung near, with doubtless a mixed feeling of irritation and appetite, which was testified by the restless movement ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... off his irritation, and could now calmly tell himself that the blunder was made and over with, and that it was the duty of the philosopher to remember it only in so far as it must shape his future course. His house of cards had toppled over; but the profound indifferentism of his nature enabled ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... clue to the advice of the physician who advises isolation as a step toward the cure of the member of the family who first breaks down, not simply under the stress of occupation, but of occupation plus the wear and tear of minor but constant sources of irritation. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

... source fascinated me. I had no theory to go on, except a vague idea that I had come between two poles of a discharge, and had taken a shock meant for some one else. This was followed by a feeling of intense irritation. I waited cautiously on myself, expecting to be overtaken by horror of the supernatural, but my self persisted in being humanly indignant, exactly as though it had been the victim of a practical joke. It was in great pains and upheavals—that ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... hostile country; for, previous to their arrival, the people there had taken no part either way in the struggle, but the overbearing manner of Tesse, and the lax discipline of his troops, had speedily caused an intense feeling of irritation. Resistance had been offered to foraging parties of the French army, and the terrible vengeance which had been taken by Tesse for these acts had roused the whole province ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... spasm. But as his eyes rested on Isaura's face, which had become radiant with the enthusiastic delight of genius when the path it would select opens before it as if by a flash from heaven, whatever of jealous irritation, whatever of selfish pain he might before have felt; was gone, merged in a sentiment of unutterable sadness and compassion. Practical man as he was, he knew so well all the dangers, all the snares, all the sorrows, all the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the part of the inhabitants of the sea coast, soon became burdensome; and the governors of the several colonies pressed for detachments from the main army. Although it was impossible to spare the troops required, without hazarding the cause of the colonies, great irritation was excited by the refusal to comply with these demands of particular protection. They at length became so importunate, and the unavoidable refusal to comply with them was so ill received, that congress was induced to pass a resolution, declaring that the army ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... to him, her eyes welling. But he had turned sharply away from her cry, and strode across the room in his irritation. Her hands fell, and one caught at the edge of the table for support while she leaned, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... her husband. "I beg ten thousand pardons," he resumed, again addressing himself to Magdalen. "The sad truth is, I am a martyr to my own sense of order. All untidiness, all want of system and regularity, cause me the acutest irritation. My attention is distracted, my composure is upset; I can't rest till things are set straight again. Externally speaking, Mrs. Wragge is, to my infinite regret, the crookedest woman I ever met with. More to the right!" ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... so," returned Lane, with irritation. "A few more or less won't matter.... Lorna, do you ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... the moral courage to open his mind to his son, he allowed the subject to drift on in the dilatory fashion characteristic of his nation; and as time went on, he began to allude to the coming glories of Llaniago in a manner which soothed Will's irritation, and made him think that the old man, on reconsideration, was as usual becoming reconciled to his son's plans. As a matter of fact, Ebben Owens was endeavouring to adjust his ideas to those of his son, solving the difficulties which perplexed him by mentally referring to "Davy ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... beanfeasters and their ladies. In appearance the men were aggressive, their hats were on the backs of their heads, and enormous chrysanthemums bulged from their buttonholes, and must, I should think, have been a source of constant irritation to their chins. The girls giggled when they saw me, and one of the men asked me what I wanted. I told him I was looking for a comfortable place in which to sit down and that he seemed to have found it first. The girls giggled again and the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... too is no less conspicuous; this is shown in the gentle, earnest, kind-hearted tone of every Sermon in the book. There is no scolding, no asperity of language, no irritation of manner about them. At the same time there is no over-strained tenderness, nor affectation of endearment; but there is a considerate, serious concern, about the peculiar sins and temptations of the people committed to his charge, and a hearty ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various

... Fein's second-best war-cry, "Up the KAISER," is causing some irritation in the Wilhelmstrasse, where it is freely admitted that the KAISER is already far higher ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... disappointment that my great discovery had dwindled away: the place where we were was infested by land-crabs who kept running over us continually, and the sand which drifted before the wind got into the pores of the skin, and kept most of us in a constant state of painful irritation. The night was therefore ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... rescuing her pans of milk and her jars of cream. Evadna, upon the top step, sat with her feet tucked up under her as if she feared an instant inundation. She, also, was giving utterance to her feminine irritation at the discomfort—of her aunt presumably, since she ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... That he is capable of profound affections merely modifies here and there his natural contentiousness, and subdues its expression. Even love, in the largest and purest sense of the word, is no safeguard against perilous irritation and sensibilities inborn. And what were the durability of love without ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... and planted it by the window. Never a very patient man, he waited for Kent with increasing irritation, and at the end of half an hour his temper was uppermost. "Give me something to write with," he demanded of Sylvester. Accepting the clerk's fountain pen without thanks, he walked over to the center table and, drawing ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... asked, with somewhat of irritation, for it did not seem to me wise the lad should run the chances of capture when nothing was to be effected by ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis

... laughed with such genuine and good-natured amusement that the young lady felt somehow a little small, and almost ashamed, although it took the form of suppressed irritation. 'He really ought not to come here in such things,' she said to herself; 'and I don't believe that, even now, he ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... whom it is hardest to get to hear; it is rather the man who is roaring out himself, and so who cannot attend to anything else. Now this is provoking. It is a mortifying indication of the little importance that is attached to what we are saying; and there is something of the irritation that is produced in the living being by contending with the passive resistance of inert matter. And there is something provoking even in the outward signs that the mind is in a non-receptive state. You remember the eye that is looking beyond you,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... lately been experiencing in Var Vale, his temper would have been antipathetic in a high degree, had he either by inquiry or imagination been able to apprehend it. Once upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation, that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine; and his father's grief was of that blank description which could not realize that there might lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Robert, but with a slight hint of irritation in his manner. "Such things do not happen these days. This is the twentieth century, my dear madam. The thing, at the very latest, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... transactions; recalled in 1796, was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs; supported Bonaparte in his ambitious schemes, and on the latter becoming Emperor, was made Grand Chamberlain and Duke of Benevento, while he retained the portfolio of Foreign Affairs; in a fit of irritation Napoleon one day discharged him, and he refused to accept office again when twice over recalled; he attached himself to the Bourbons on their return, and becoming Foreign Minister to Louis XVIII., was made a peer, and sent ambassador to the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... gospel—could be brought within the Legation area. In consequence of this hardly any Chinese Protestants have as yet come in. Of course circumstance, the force of example, and a timidity in the face of the growing irritation, have at length broken down this weak-kneed attitude, but people have not yet finished discussing it. For instance, there is a remarkable story about the well-known S——, who wrote that celebrated book, "Chinese Characteristics." He turned up at the British Legation late one evening, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... he treats with open scorn. That some of the effects were palpably fraudulent, and that, fraud apart, there remained a residuum of phenomena not easy to explain, were all irritating facts. Yet no one can mistake Sludge for an outflow of personal irritation, still less for an act of literary vengeance upon the impostor who had beguiled the lofty and ardent intelligence of his wife. The resentful husband is possibly there, but so elementary an emotion could ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... not be so sure," retorted Evatt, in evident irritation. "'Twixt thine army service, the ship that fetched thee on, and that miniature, I have more clues than have served to ferret ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... obtained, and then are disappointed and vexed at the failure. It is as if a carpenter should attempt to support an entablature by pillars of wood too small and weak for the weight, and then go on, from week to week, suffering anxiety and irritation as he sees them swelling and splitting under the burden, and finding fault with the wood instead of taking it to himself; or as if a plowman were to attempt to work a hard and stony piece of ground with a poor team and a small plow, and then, when overcome by the difficulties of the task, ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... his example—viz. to break faith with Chilian Government to which we had both sworn—to abandon the squadron to his interests—and to accept the higher grade of "First Admiral of Peru." I need scarcely say that a proposition so dishonourable was declined; when in a tone of irritation he declared that "he would neither give the seamen their arrears of pay, nor ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... home, while I still lacked thirty thousand words. I had been sick and got delayed. I am going to write all day and two-thirds of the night until the thing is done or break down at it. The spur and burden of the contract are intolerable to me. I can endure the irritation of it no longer. I went to work at nine o'clock yesterday morning and went to bed an hour after midnight. Result of the day (mainly stolen from books though credit given), 9,500 words, so I reduced my burden by one-third in one day. It was five days' work in one. I have nothing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... beastly lot of tumbling water," he said with sudden overmastering irritation. "Let's get away from it, ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... larger every day," said the agonized Harriet, and gave her niece a violent push. Then Irma cried, and Mrs. Herriton was annoyed with Harriet for betraying irritation. Lunch was nasty; and during pudding news arrived that the cook, by sheer dexterity, had broken a very vital knob off the kitchen-range. "It is too bad," said Mrs. Herriton. Irma said it was three bad, and was told not to be rude. After lunch Harriet would get out Baedeker, and ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster

... breathing (respiration) and it warms and moistens the air we breathe and arrests particles of dust in the air before they enter the lungs. If the air we breathe is of an uneven temperature, or of marked degree of dryness, or if it is saturated with impurities, it always acts as a source of irritation to the mucous membrane of the upper respiratory tract, like the larynx. By the time the air reaches the pharynx, through the nose, it has become almost as warm as the blood, and also is well saturated with moisture. The mucous membrane that lines the nose cavity ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... Paul! And my judgment's warped, is it?" There was irritation in Mr. Prohack's voice. He took out his watch. "In sixty or seventy seconds you shall hear that clock strike eleven, and you shall give me your honest views about it. And you ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... bath has been for a long course of years as necessary to me as my daily food. The exercise of swimming has been through life my chief pleasure and my only medicine—a never-failing restorative from weakness and weariness, and, what may appear strange to some readers, from the effects of irritation, anxiety, and mortification ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various

... time. Her nerves were all on edge and she showed some irritation at the delay. I felt then that I had to take ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... his reverie. He felt that scalding irritation in his chest, which always came as soon as his pride, the pride of the reckless vagrant, was touched by anyone, and especially by one who was of no value in ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... Here we have an explanation of the multitude of off-hand sayings, flippant judgments, and shallow generalizations, with which the world abounds. Not from self-will only, nor from malevolence, but from the irritation which suspense occasions, is the mind forced on to pronounce, without sufficient data for pronouncing. Who does not form some view or other, for instance, of any public man, or any public event, nay, even so far in some cases as to reach the mental delineation of his appearance or of its scene? ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... state of things is plausible enough. It would be strange if the two disgraced favourites did not at their frequent meetings club and inflame their mutual pique. Obviously, apart from acts, of which there was no evidence, no irritation by Ralegh, however envenomed, as it was not shown to have been, of Cobham's discontent, could in him have been treason. Judged by all sound laws of evidence, the testimony of the statement was as flimsy ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... put down his knife and fork with a little gesture of irritation. His broad, good-natured face was for the moment clouded. "Say, Cullen," he remonstrated, "don't you think you're carrying this a bit too far, you know? There isn't a man I enjoy a half-hour's chat with more than ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and inconsistent movement of irritation, he again attempted speaking to Hyacinth through the door, assuring her that if she would only open it, he would convince her. But as he received no answer, he was too proud to say any more, and retired sulkily ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... always in mind, and acted out in the sweet offices of love towards the unfortunate. Such surroundings were life-giving to the poor little invalid. Her fretfulness gave way, and a sweet quietness succeeded her nervous irritation. After the weary turmoil of the past in the noisy, crowded home, there was now a serene peace for her, as if the angels had taken her ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker

... as good as the readin'll be," he retorted, with evident irritation. "I bet I spell as well as any o' the folks ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... Marian felt her irritation against Danvers suddenly vanish and in its place a Sense of relief and of calmness. "I mean toward you. It won't do, Teddy. We shall get on well as friends. But I can't think of ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... friend' was considered a good joke, and a laugh, produced by some inaudible remark of the editor, as he closed the door, completed her discomfiture. Half resolving never to return, she went home, and worked off her irritation by stitching pinafores vigorously, and in an hour or two was cool enough to laugh over the scene and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... knew it was Copeland even before he let his gaze wheel around to the newcomer. About the entire figure, in fact, he could detect that familiar veiled wariness, that enigmatic and self-concealing cautiousness which had always had the power to touch him into a quick irritation. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... brain. Of course he knew; otherwise he wouldn't return my stare so queerly. His wife had told him what I wanted, and he was amiably amused at my impotence. He didn't laugh—he was not a laugher: his system was to present to my irritation, so that I should crudely expose myself, a conversational blank as vast as his big bare brow. It always happened that I turned away with a settled conviction from these unpeopled expanses, which seemed to complete each ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... there is always greater danger of such a war than any Englishman imagines or than many Americans would like to confess. However true it may be that it takes two to make a quarrel, it is none the less true that if one party be bent upon quarrelling it is always possible for him to go to lengths of irritation and insult which must ultimately provoke the most peaceful and reluctant of antagonists. However pacific and reluctant to fight Great Britain might be at the outset, she is not conspicuously lacking in national pride or in ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... result of your reckless driving. The cork came out of my cough syrup in the suitcase. The only way I can get relief from the irritation is to apply my tongue to the puddle. I shall have to lick my valise until I can have ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... Home Rule was as bad as Home Influences and Home Cooking, and all the other degrading domesticities that began with the word "Home." His ultimate support of the South African war was largely created by his irritation against the other revolutionists for favouring a nationalist resistance. The ordinary Imperialists objected to Pro-Boers because they were anti-patriots. Bernard Shaw objected to Pro-Boers because ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... fortnight we paraded for our pay outside one of the bigger sheds of the yard. As a rule, I was filled with impatience and irritation at having to wait in a long queue and move forward step by step, but now it had become pleasant to tarry in the sunshine. One day, when we were lined up between two large huts, a deep Yellow Brimstone butterfly came floating idly past. It gave me inexpressible ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... thus getting free. But alas! The porter of the chateau, who had no business there, suddenly appeared in the corridor, and she was discovered and taken back to her chamber. At Beaurevoir, which was farther off, her attempt was a much more desperate one, and indicates a despair and irritation of mind which had become unbearable. At this place her own condition was much alleviated; the castle was the residence of Jean de Luxembourg's wife and aunt, ladies who visited Jeanne continually, and soon ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... His irritation mounting, Ramsey pulled out the Interstellar Transfer Service authorization form and showed it to the Security Officer. "A tip-sheet for the ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance

... Lionardo and hurt the feelings of his best and oldest friends, he discovered signs of a highly nervous and fretful temperament. It must be admitted that the dominant qualities of nobility and generosity in his nature were alloyed by suspicion bordering on littleness, and by petulant yieldings to the irritation of the moment which are incompatible with the calm of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... myself fallen into temptation (as, Heaven knows, I might) I should have trembled, but still hoped and asked for her forgiveness; and yet mine had been a treason in the teeth of love. But let me tell you, madam," he pursued, with rising irritation, "where a husband by futility, facility, and ill-timed humours has outwearied his wife's patience, I will suffer neither man nor woman to misjudge her. She is free; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... most reprehensible," exclaimed Professor Porter, with a faint trace of irritation in his voice. "Never, Mr. Philander, never before in my life have I known one of these animals to be permitted to roam at large from its cage. I shall most certainly report this outrageous breach of ethics to the directors ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... "Among the Greeks and Romans, every syllable, or at least by far the greatest number of syllables, was known to have a fixed and determined quantity."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 303. "Their vanity is awakened and their passions exalted by the irritation, which their self-love receives from contradiction."—Influence of Literature, Vol. ii. p. 218. "I and he was neither of us any great swimmer."—Anon. "Virtue, honour, nay, even self-interest, conspire to recommend the measure."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... up to my temples with shame and irritation at her words; and then another look at the worn face under the widow's cap restrained my momentary impatience. Dot, who was watching us, struck in in his ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... wonderful news. She would understand.... Well, well! It was time for bed. He rose and switched off the lights and went to his room. But as he walked through the great, noiseless house, he felt, in spite of Fortune's bounty, a loneliness of soul; also irritation at having lost Jane. What a letter he could have written to her! He could not say the things with which his heart was bursting to anyone on earth but Jane. Why had he lost Jane? The prospective Awakener of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... certain again that they exchanged glances, but they continued to present an unbroken front of ignorance. Wasson was divided between irritation and amusement. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... congenial, and the prospect of "potting a Boer" not at all bad. With the Light Horse were soon to be associated some hundreds of the Cape Police (who came in from Fourteen Streams); and the combined forces inflicted considerable damage, and were a perennial source of irritation to the enemy all through. De Beers came out strong in another direction by heading the list of subscriptions to a Refugee fund which had been opened. The amount subscribed ran up to four figures. Much distress prevailed, and the Refugee ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... before. Never had he been so inaccessibly withdrawn into his fatal dream. Beatrice forgot her own bitter sorrow in her fear for him, so wrought was he with the fires that consumed him. Some days she almost feared for his reason, and she longed to watch over him, but his old irritation ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne

... sting. If in the excitement of debate he inflicted pain, he was ready and prompt to make amends, and died, as far as I know, without an enemy or an unhealed feud. I had with him more than one political debate and controversy, but they left no coolness or irritation. In our last conversation in the spring of 1889, we talked of old times and early scenes more than thirty years past and gone, and he recalled them only to praise those who differed with him. He had malice for none, but charity for all. In that endearing tie of husband and wife, which, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... the waterproof. No doubt the irritation in his voice was caused by having to confess to such a common name. "Robertson Jones. Be sure you have it right," and he passed along the rail to make room for two women ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of Kant's philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of my own. "I am endeavoring," exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the irritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, "to understand ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... where the queen was then residing. The plundering business was warmly discussed between himself and the Admiral, and there was much quibbling and special pleading in defence of the practices which had created so much irritation and pecuniary loss in Holland. There was a good deal of talk about want of evidence and conflict of evidence, which, to a man who felt as sure of the facts and of the law as the Dutch envoy did—unless it were according to public law for one friend and, ally to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... when he offered her a cigarette and she refused, had in it a touch of irritation. "But, my dear girl, ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... simply results of the excess of caloric, which excites universal irritation, and, if prolonged, destroys the tissues. This fact I have verified by three series of experiments, by the first of which it was shown that the general application of external heat so as to raise the bodily temperature produces ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... his companion as if she had shaken him out of a dream. Her dark eyes were gleaming with irritation, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Nelly," replied John, with irritation, "that this Bryant woman's article practically accuses you of risking lives to ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... There are, also, slight attacks of cold, influenza, and accidents in a thousand forms, to which all are subject, where domestic nursing becomes a necessity; where disease, though unattended with danger, is nevertheless accompanied by the nervous irritation incident to illness, and when all the attention of the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... required it. The others behaved to her as to any customer known to stand upon her dignity, but she made them no return in politeness; and the way she would order Mary, now there was no father to offend, would have been amusing enough but for the irritation its extreme rudeness caused her. She did, however, manage sometimes to be at once both a little angry and much amused. Small idea had Mrs. Turnbull of the diversion which on such occasions she ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... said to herself she was prone to criticize or contradict, if it were too confidently or urgently pressed on her by another; perhaps, too, Cynthia's claim to be the Captain's mouthpiece stirred up in her a latent resentment; it was not to be called a jealousy; it was rather an amused irritation at both the divinity and his worshiper. His worshipers can sometimes make a divinity ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... determine the value and obligations of the family, whether urban or rural, requires first of all a clear statement of the significant places of irritation, where at present the family is meeting strain that makes readjustment necessary. These may be classified as difficulties ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves

... until eternity, with no hope that he could ever learn the secret of the soul behind them, nothing the future might have to give could make up for the loss. It was only when the Flying Fish swam safely into the harbour that Vanno remembered his irritation at seeing Mary with all those men, the only woman among them. After what he had gone through since then, this annoyance seemed a ridiculously small thing; but no sooner was she on land again, received with ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... refused to join the company, carried on a bold illicit traffic along the borders of the St. Lawrence, endangering the colony by selling fire-arms to the Indians, eluding pursuit, or, if hard pressed, showing fight; and this was a source of perpetual irritation to the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... hotel in a state of great irritation. With the sight of a good dinner, however, this was in a degree dispelled, and before he finished it, his philosophy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... parts of their persons, swearing volubly in English. For the Cree language is devoid of invective. In the morning we are a sorry crowd, conversation is monosyllabic and very much to the point. It is the first serious trial to individual good-humour. When each one of your four million pores is an irritation-channel of mosquito-virus it would be a relief to growl at somebody about something. But the sun and smiles come out at the same time, and, having bled together, we cement bonds of friendship. What did Henry the Fifth say on the eve of Agincourt,—"For ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... willingness to go. This willingness grew into a desire, which at intervals expressed itself in petulant words of longing—"Are we ever going to France?" The answer was always the same: "You will go soon enough, and you will stay long enough." This increased our irritation. Suddenly, on one still and dark November day, parade was sharply cancelled, we clad ourselves in full marching order, there was just a moment to scrawl on a postcard a few last words home, tender words were exchanged with our friends ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... was ruffled, and he walked away to look for his partner, to lose his irritation in ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... of fine odour from the Havana cigar which Helmsley was enjoying floated under the nostrils of Mr. Arbroath, and added a fresh touch of irritation to his temper. He turned at ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... why do you not keep your shoulders back?" repeated Winsome sharply, and with a kind of irritation at ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... said the Angel, starting back and coming into contact with a lady's hat. "Why do they have them so large?" he asked, with a certain irritation. ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... e., a sharking) attorney; whilst, on the other hand, that assumption lent strength to his misapprehension of the case. Angry interruptions began: these, being retorted or resented with just indignation, produced an irritation and ill temper, which, of themselves, were quite sufficient to raise a cloud of perplexity over any law process, and to obscure it for any understanding. The commissioner grew warmer and warmer; and, at length, he had the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... What increased the irritation of Messrs. Crooks and M'Lellan, at this mortifying check to their gainful enterprise, was the information that a rival trader was at the bottom of it; the Sioux, it is said, having been instigated to this outrage by Mr. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... town could have overheard Clem scolding the lady with frank irritation in his voice,—as I chanced to do once or twice,—had it beheld his scowl as he raged, "Miss Cahline, yo' sho'ly gittin' old 'nuff to know betteh'n that. I suttinly do wish yo' Paw was alive an' yeh'bouts. Ah git him ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... hard shell, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead. This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting shell, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... desert; the war dragged on; and Marius, perhaps ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general's want of vigor, began to think that he could make quicker work of it. The popular party were stirring again in Rome, the Senate having so notoriously disgraced itself. There was just irritation that a petty African prince could defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic consul had been unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The law required that he must be present in person at ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... days? Above all, ought he to have capped these sulks by a proceeding which I can't forgive, and which—only just made known to us—has struck the girl's heart with despair, and also with a feeling of extreme irritation?" ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... a condition as of suspended weight and arrested mass, stilled to artless awe by the fact of her vision. Julia had practised almost to lassitude the art of tracing in the people who looked at her the impression promptly sequent; but it was a striking point that if, in irritation, in depression, she felt that the lightest eyes of men, stupid at their clearest, had given her pretty well all she should ever care for, she could still gather a freshness from the tribute of her own sex, still care to see her reflection in the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... Mr. Williams, "that the ordinary motives on which men are careful of their lives are wanting to Captain Nicholas, and have been for some time: and just at this moment his old feelings of jealousy, or rather of anxiety and irritation, are perhaps revived by the presence of Sir Charles Davenant.—You are aware probably that Sir Charles was formerly a suitor of Miss Walladmor's, and rejected only through the firmness of that lady; ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... American, who is a consistent friend of England,[377] in a review article affirmed that the proposed League of Nations is slowly undermining the Anglo-American Entente. "There is in America a growing sense of irritation that she should be forever entangled in the spider-web of European politics." ... And if the Senate in the supposed interests of peace should ratify the League, he adds, "In my judgment no greater harm could result to Anglo-American unity than such ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... will appear that we have practiced prudence and liberality toward foreign powers, averting causes of irritation and with firmness maintaining ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... of the varying sensations they awaken. Smoothness and roughness are varying outlines of surface, existing as physical conformation; the pleasurable or disagreeable sensations awakened in us by contact being due to the greater or less irritation of the nerves of feeling that attrition with it occasions. Motion is absolutely necessary to give us an ides of the density or configuration of an object. The mere touch of that object is insufficient to possess us with its nature. Iron and down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... content with a victory which, as Gibbon said of his own, "over such an antagonist was a sufficient humiliation." Milton's magnanimity was no match for his irritation. He published a rejoinder to Morus's Fides Publica, reiterating his belief that Morus was author of the Clamor, but that it was no matter whether he was or not, since by publishing the book, and furnishing it with a recommendatory ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... prison, and in which he explained his reasons for his crime. For a moment M. de Larombiere hesitated, all surprise and indignation at such a request; but he was aware that he could not legally impose silence on the prisoner, and so he signified his consent with a gesture of mingled irritation and disdain. Thereupon Salvat began his perusal much after the fashion of a schoolboy, hemming and hawing here and there, occasionally becoming confused, and then bringing out certain words with wonderful emphasis, which evidently pleased him. This declaration of his was the usual cry of suffering ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... apparently in a wreck. But Fortune had not entirely deserted him. Hooker in a fit of irritation had offered his resignation. Lincoln had accepted it. Under a new commander, the army of the Potomac had moved against Lee. The orators at the Fourth of July meeting had read in the papers that same day Lincoln's announcement of the victory at Gettysburg.(22) ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... his manner; his looks are too prying for an indifferent observer," continued young Wharton thoughtfully, "and his face seems familiar to me. The recent fate of Andre has created much irritation on both sides. The rebels would think me a fit subject for their plans should I be so unlucky as to fall into their hands. My visit to you would seem to them a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.



Words linked to "Irritation" :   last straw, pique, innervation, seeing red, hurt, miff, restlessness, exasperation, vexation, discomfort, arousal, pinprick, red flag, sensitization, impatience, aggro, soreness, botheration, suffering, snit, taunt



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