Meaning

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

Definitions by Sense

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

Example Sentences

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

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

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.

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

Word Forms

• irritates
• irritating
• irritated

Synonyms for irritate

Antonyms for irritate

Related Words

When Should You Use Irritate?

Use irritate when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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