Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of provoking or inciting.
  • noun Something that provokes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of provoking or exciting anger or vexation.
  • noun Anything that excites anger; a cause of anger or resentment.
  • noun An appeal to a court or judge.
  • noun Incitement; stimulus.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of provoking, or causing vexation or, anger.
  • noun That which provokes, or excites anger; the cause of resentment.
  • noun Incitement; stimulus.
  • noun (Law) Such prior insult or injury as may be supposed, under the circumstances, to create hot blood, and to excuse an assault made in retort or redress.
  • noun obsolete An appeal to a court. [A Latinism]

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

  • noun The act of provoking, inciting or annoying someone into doing something
  • noun Something that provokes; a provocative act
  • noun The second step in OPQRST regarding the investigation of what makes the symptoms MOI or NOI improve or deteriorate.

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

  • noun needed encouragement
  • noun something that incites or provokes; a means of arousing or stirring to action
  • noun unfriendly behavior that causes anger or resentment

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English provocacioun, from Old French provocation, from Latin prōvocātiō, prōvocātiōn-, a challenging, from prōvocātus, past participle of prōvocāre, to challenge; see provoke.]

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