irritate

Etymology

From Latin irritatus, past participle of irritare (“to excite, irritate, incite, stimulate”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪɹɪteɪt/

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Verb

irritate (third-person singular simple present irritates, present participle irritating, simple past and past participle irritated)

1. (transitive) To provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure.
   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., 55 Fifth Avenue, [1933], OCLC 2666860, page 0056:

     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.

2. (transitive) To introduce irritability or irritation in.
3. (intransitive) To cause or induce displeasure or irritation.
4. (transitive) To induce pain in (all or part of a body or organism).
5. (obsolete) To render null and void.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Archbishop Bramhall to this entry?)

See also

• exasperate
• peeve
• disturb

Adjective

irritate f pl

1. feminine plural of irritato

Verb

irritate

1. second-person plural present of irritare
2. second-person plural imperative of irritare
3. feminine plural past participle of irritare

Anagrams

• arteriti
• atterrii
• irretita
• ritirate
• tiritera
• triterai

Verb

irrītāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of irrītō

References

• irritate in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• irritate in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette