Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To incite to anger or resentment.
- v. To stir to action or feeling.
- v. To give rise to; evoke: provoke laughter.
- v. To bring about deliberately; induce: provoke a fight.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To call forth or out; challenge; summon.
- To stimulate to action; move; excite; arouse.
- To call forth; cause; occasion; instigate.
- To excite to anger or passion; exasperate; irritate; enrage.
- Synonyms and To stir up, rouse, awake, induce, incite, impel, kindle.
- Irritate, Incense, etc. (see exasperate), offend, anger, chafe, nettle, gall.
- To appeal.
- To produce anger or irritation. Compare provoking.
Wiktionary
- v. to cause (a person) to become annoyed or angry.
- v. to bring about a reaction.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. 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.
- v. To cause provocation or anger.
- v. To appeal. [A Latinism]
WordNet 3.0
- v. annoy continually or chronically
- v. call forth (emotions, feelings, and responses)
- v. provide the needed stimulus for
- v. evoke or provoke to appear or occur
Etymologies
- Middle English provoken, from Old French provoquer, from Latin prōvocāre, to challenge : prō-, forth; see pro-1 + vocāre, to call; see wekw- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“Let them, as far as I am concerned, but it may short term provoke more counterreaction.”
“Today, another American legend, Mark Twain, celebrated for the power of his language and his ability to delight and provoke, is also under attack.”
“A very large part of our knowledge about immunity against bacteria and the diseases they provoke is therefore due to the action of haemolytic sera on red corpuscles, and it was only later that attempts were made to find out if, and in what measure, the detected properties apply equally to bacteria and the bacteriolytic sera.”
“God they provoke is just, and holy, and terrible, and not such a one as themselves.”
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume III (Job to Song of Solomon)
“No, the federal response the state of Arizona is trying to provoke is to police the damn border already.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Is the Arizona Immigration Law Preempted?
“Its not just the number of responses, I think is important, but the kind of responses your posts provoke, that is the essense of what makes your blog so different.”
“And I'm very surprised that bin Laden, that al Qaeda would pull something on this scale knowing what the response was going to be unless that's what they intended to provoke, which is another theory.”
“They provoke, that is, a strong reaction, which it was also intended to use for therapeutic purposes.”
“Irish bailout terms provoke risk of revolt over next week's budget”
“Irish bailout terms provoke risk of revolt over next week's budget Ireland will not give up low tax regime, Enda Kenny tells Angela Merkel”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘provoke’.
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Words starting with PRO
I've noticed many, many words start with PRO and this is just a collection of them.
professional, pronunciation, Prolagus, probable, prog, proximity, profit, procrastincate, prom, pronoun, promise, proactive and 206 more...
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