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/ˈɪrɪtˌeɪt/ Listen

Irritate

verb

(past & past part. irritated; pres. part. irritating)

Cause annoyance in; disturb, especially by minor irritations. Synonyms: annoy, bother, chafe, devil, get at, get to, gravel, nark, nettle, rag, rile, vex. "It irritates me that she never closes the door after she leaves"

Excite to an abnormal condition, or chafe or inflame. Antonym: soothe.

Excite to some characteristic action or condition, such as motion, contraction, or nervous impulse, by the application of a stimulus.

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"Irritate" Quotes from Famous Books

... advantages, just or unjust, of the wealthier classes without abatement. I do hope wise men will not attempt to fight the working men on the head of this notorious injustice. Any such step will only precipitate the action of the newly enfranchised classes, and irritate them into acting hastily; when what we ought to desire should be that they should act warily and little for many years to come, until education and habit may make them ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... might have been that it is difficult to say what is fiction and what is actuality in it. With regard to the 'conversation' during the bombardment, it represents in its totality what I believe the ordinary soldier feels. He loathes the war, and the grandiloquent speeches of politicians irritate him by their failure to realize how loathesome war is. At the same time he knows he has got to go through with it, and only longs for the chance to hurry up. In the 'Diary,' again, I quite deliberately emphasized the depression of the man who thought he was ...

— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... are thousands and thousands of men ready to do the same, they may fine me, perhaps, but I should say that is all. However, what I want to say to you is, keep out of the way, if they come. I shall make light of the affair, while you, being pretty hot tempered, might say things that would irritate them, while they could be of no assistance to me. Therefore, I would rather that you were kept out of it, altogether. I shall want you here. In my absence, there must be somebody to ...

— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... one of several of Boswell's depreciatory mentions of Goldsmith—which may well irritate biographers and admirers—and also those who take that more kindly and more profound view of Boswell's own character, which was opened up by Mr. Carlyle's famous article on his book. No wonder that Mr. Irving calls Boswell an "incarnation of toadyism". ...

— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois! ...

— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

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