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.
 Such acts
 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.


 provoked
      adj : incited, especially deliberately, to anger; "aggravated by
            passive resistance"; "the provoked animal attacked the
            child" [syn: aggravated]