Pro·voke v. t. [imp. & p. p. Provoked p. pr. & vb. n. 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. --Ex. xxiii. 21.
Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. --Eph. vi. 4.
Of contumacy will provoke the Highest
To make death in us live. --Milton.
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust? --Gray.
To the poet the meaning is what he pleases to make it, what it provokes in his own soul. -- J. Burroughs.
Syn: -- To irritate; arouse; stir up; awake; excite; incite; anger. See Irritate.
adj : incited, especially deliberately, to anger; "aggravated by
passive resistance"; "the provoked animal attacked the
child" [syn: aggravated]