Irritate Meaning
/ˈɪɹ.ɪˌteɪt/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
verbTo provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.
verbTo cause or induce displeasure or irritation.
Sentence Examples
The fact seemed to irritate her husband.
His incompetence began to irritate everyone.
Doesn't it irritate you to see couples making out around town?
CEFR Practice Quiz
The rough fabric of the new shirt began to ____ her skin after wearing it all day.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The loud noise of the construction work began to ____ the residents who lived in the nearby buildings.
Word Origin & History
Borrowed from Latin irrītātus, perfect passive participle of irrītō (“excite, irritate, incite, stimulate”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"If thou irritatest my lord, there will come to war against thee all the Getulians, Numidians, and Garamantes, Afric contains."
— 1814, Signor Vestris, La Didone Abbandonata, a Serious Opera, in Two Acts. Altered from Metastasio, by Signor Vestris. As Represented at the King’s Theatre, in the Hay-Market., London: […] J. Gillet, […], page 15:
"Thou scandalizest me and irritatest my nature as much as it possibly can be irritated."
— 1896, Ernest Rénan, translated by Eleanor Grant Vickery, Caliban: A Philosophical Drama Continuing “The Tempest” of William Shakespeare (Publications of The Shakespeare Society of New York; No. 9), New York, N.Y.: The Shakespeare Press; London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., page 19:
"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."
— 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 10:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The rough fabric of the new shirt began to ____ her skin after wearing it all day.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The loud noise of the construction work began to ____ the residents who lived in the nearby buildings.