Definition of Provoke

Provoke

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.

To cause provocation or anger.

To appeal. [A Latinism]

Related Definitions:

Action, Ambition, Anger, Appeal, As, Being, By, Call, Cause, Challenge, Commonly, Defiance, Exasperate, Faculty, Forth, Hate, Hence, Incense, Incite, Into, Irritate, Latinism, Love, Offend, Or, Passion, Person, Provocation, Retaliate, To

Provoke Quotations

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Henry David Thoreau

A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
Elie Wiesel

Herr Schroder has conducted two electoral campaigns, and he is doing it again now, by not telling people what is really necessary. He keeps avoiding the difficult and uncomfortable issues, those that imply changes and therefore provoke discussions.
Angela Merkel

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Charles Babbage

And it will fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others.
Thomas More

Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities.
Marvin Olasky

When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.
George Henry Lewes

And it says something about our level of disassociation, that we can provoke these wars abroad but we're not allowed to see people get killed as a result.
Alex Cox

What did our nation ever do to provoke these madly vicious enemies? What is seen as injustice in one place is seen as just requital in the other.
Mary Douglas

However, the combination of civil resistance, of large-scale mass activities and strikes, with a certain degree of revolutionary violence, could provoke a crisis in the enemy's camp that would ultimately lead to essential changes.
Joe Slovo

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.
James Ellroy

And so we have to be careful with looking at additional stimulus that we don't provoke an increase in the bond rate and then offset a lot of the stimulus we've already got.
Franklin Raines

After that he turned to the question of invading England. Hitler said that during the previous year he could not afford to risk a possible failure; apart from that, he had not wished to provoke the British, as he hoped to arrange peace talks.
Kurt Student

I think cinema should provoke thoughts, sure, but using it as I soapbox I think is the wrong place.
Jeremy Renner

To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.
Ernst Fischer

Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.
Georges Sorel

The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.
Octave Mirbeau

Repression will provoke rebellion.
Hugh Williamson

More Provoke Quotations

Provoke Translations

provoke in Danish is udfordre
provoke in Dutch is aanstoken, ophitsen, irriteren
provoke in French is chiffonent, chiffoner, irriter, provoquons
provoke in German is provoziere, provozieren, herausfordern
provoke in Italian is sfidare, esacerbare, cagionare
provoke in Portuguese is provoque
provoke in Spanish is retar, pinchar, provocar

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