A strong feeling of displeasure or hostility.
v. an·gered, an·ger·ing, an·gers
To make angry; enrage or provoke.
To become angry: She angers too quickly.
[Middle English, from Old Norse angr, sorrow; see angh- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]
Synonyms: anger, rage, fury, ire, wrath, resentment, indignation
These nouns denote varying degrees of marked displeasure. Anger, the most general, is strong and often heated displeasure: shook her fist in anger; retorted in anger at the insult; tried to suppress his anger over the treatment he had received.
Rage and fury imply intense, explosive, often destructive emotion: smashed the glass in a fit of rage; lashed out in fury at the lies her opponent had spread.
Ire is a term for anger most frequently encountered in literature: "The best way to escape His ire / Is, not to seem too happy" (Robert Browning).
Wrath applies especially to a powerful anger that seeks vengeance or punishment: "[He] was arrested and was spared the awful wrath of my pistol-whipping uncles" (Maya Angelou).
Resentment refers to indignant smoldering anger generated by a sense of grievance: deep resentment among the workers that eventually led to a strike.
Indignation is righteous anger at something wrongful, unjust, or evil: "public indignation about takeovers causing people to lose their jobs" (Allan Sloan).
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.