Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a provoking manner; so as to excite anger or annoyance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In a provoking manner.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb in a provocative manner

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Why, oh why, Bastiat implored Cobden, would Britain not consent to shrink its provokingly large navy?

    For Love of Laissez-Faire James Grant 2011

  • This kind of thought, is provokingly problematic, in that if animals are able to experience, and if we agree (or basically agree) on some level that this is the case, then the argument for their death/confinement for production of bodily secretions at our hands + for our purposes, consumption + taste makes a family farm a killing factory as is a factory farm.

    Vegan Envy 2009

  • Rabb's prose can occasionally be provokingly gnomic, but as usual, he has a good story to tell and most readers will bear with him contentedly.

    Shadow and Light: Summary and book reviews of Shadow and Light by Jonathan Rabb. 2009

  • Rabb's prose can occasionally be provokingly gnomic, but as usual, he has a good story to tell and most readers will bear with him contentedly.

    Shadow and Light: Summary and book reviews of Shadow and Light by Jonathan Rabb. 2009

  • "Do you know that President Obama is considering banning fishing in America?" one woman provokingly asks, and the interviewer deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for resisting the temptation to answer, "No, but if you hum a few bars I can fake it."

    Ellis Weiner: Tea Party Animals 2010

  • In its insistent interrogation of Jewishness? from the exploration of the relationship between the perpetrators of violence and hatred and their victims, to the idea of the individual at once in opposition to and in love with his or her culture? it is by turns breezily open and thought-provokingly opaque, and consistently wrong-foots the reader.

    The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson 2010

  • But then I decided to write this post first, and then Twitter and comments kind of exploded, mostly very civilly and thought provokingly but now my head hurts and I don't feel like writing anymore.

    blog: December 2009 2009

  • But then I decided to write this post first, and then Twitter and comments kind of exploded, mostly very civilly and thought provokingly but now my head hurts and I don't feel like writing anymore.

    blog: Green stains, phobia 2009

  • Robert Hewison would argue that I'm sensible to do that; although he would suggest that preserving the past is part of the impulse to preserve the self (that justifies the contents of our loft then) too much nostalgia also has its dangers and he elaborates very thought-provokingly in his book The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline which is quite a revealing expose of the growth, manufacture and marketing of heritage.

    54 entries from April 2007 2007

  • * Oliver Morton discusses this and related issues in his provokingly lyrical book Eating the Sun.

    THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH RICHARD DAWKINS 2009

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