PROVOKE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Provoke

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/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.

To cause provocation or anger.

To appeal. Note: (A Latinism) (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Provoke'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Provoke" Quotes from Famous Books

... fulsome Cretan lass; By the old man on the ass; By thy cousins in mixed shapes; By the flower of fairest grapes; By thy bisks famed far and wide; By thy store of neats'-tongues dried; By thy incense, Indian smoke; By the joys thou dost provoke; By this salt Westphalia gammon; By these sausages that inflame one; By thy tall majestic flagons; By mass, tope, and thy flapdragons; By this olive's unctuous savour; By this orange, the wine's flavour; By this ...

— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... scenes, based on his jealousies of her, which some imp in her would lead her to provoke, notwithstanding that even as she spoke she regretted, and reached ...

— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... come out from thence, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press upon him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things; laying wait for him, to catch something out of ...

— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong

... so. There had never been in the de Wissant family any of those ugly scandals which stain other clans, and which are remembered over generations in French provincial towns. Those scandals which, if they provoke a laugh and cruel sneer when discussed by the indifferent, are recalled with long faces and anxious whisperings when a young girl's future is being discussed, and which make the honourable marriage of daughters ...

— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... international law. Tampering with diplomatic correspondence was usually considered a sufficient cause for war; on this occasion war did not suit Charles's purpose, but it was no fault of Wolsey's that his fury at an alleged personal slight did not provoke hostilities with the ...

— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

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