PROVOKE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • 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

... seemed determined to provoke popular anger. The trial of Kornilov was coming on. More and more openly the bourgeois press defended him, speaking of him as "the great Russian patriot." Burtzev's paper, Obshtchee Dielo (Common Cause), called for a dictatorship of ...

— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... upon himself alone, saying, "these sheep (the people) what have they done?" We may ask the same of the rank and file of our army. What have they done? It was not they who ordained the war, and so far as personal influence may have gone to provoke war, many of those who sit at home at ease are more to blame than the men who believe that they are obeying the call of duty when they offer themselves for perils, for hardships, wounds, sickness, and lingering ...

— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... provoke each other to good works. "And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works." Heb. 10:24. We know of no better way to provoke others to good works than by setting a good example before them. All their good works ...

— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... of the insecure footing on which they stood, were careful not to provoke the hostility of the Commons. They sent no messages; they passed no bills; but exchanging matters of state for questions of religion, contrived to spend their time in discussing the form of a national ...

— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... author has been, not only to interest and amuse, but also to stimulate a taste for scientific study. He has utilized natural science as a peg whereon to hang the web of a narrative of absorbing interest, interweaving therewith sundry very striking scientific facts in such a manner as to provoke a ...

— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

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