Irritate

Quick meaning: Irritate is a verb meaning (transitive) To provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.

Meaning

(transitive) To provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.

More Meanings

1. (intransitive) To cause or induce displeasure or irritation.
2. (transitive) To induce pain in (all or part of a body or organism).
3. (transitive, obsolete, Scots law) To render null and void.

Example Sentences

Thou scandalizest me and irritatest my nature as much as it possibly can be irritated.

If thou irritatest my lord, there will come to war against thee all the Getulians, Numidians, and Garamantes, Afric contains.

c. 1634-1661 John Bramhall, Protestants' Ordination Defended Are human laws presently superfluous, so often as they do not irritate or abrogate Divine laws ?

Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

Word Forms

• irritates
• irritating
• irritated

Synonyms for irritate

Depending on context, synonyms include provoke, rile, aggravate, annoy, nettle, rankle.

Antonyms for irritate

Common opposites include placate, please, soothe.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include vex, annoy, bother, rile, rag, nark.

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