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Irritating   /ˈɪrətˌeɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Irritating

adjective
1.
Causing irritation or annoyance.  Synonyms: annoying, bothersome, galling, nettlesome, pesky, pestering, pestiferous, plaguey, plaguy, teasing, vexatious, vexing.  "Aircraft noise is particularly bothersome near the airport" , "Found it galling to have to ask permission" , "An irritating delay" , "Nettlesome paperwork" , "A pesky mosquito" , "Swarms of pestering gnats" , "A plaguey newfangled safety catch" , "A teasing and persistent thought annoyed him" , "A vexatious child" , "It is vexing to have to admit you are wrong"
2.
(used of physical stimuli) serving to stimulate or excite.  Synonym: irritative.
3.
Causing physical discomfort.  Synonym: painful.


Irritate

verb
(past & past part. irritated; pres. part. irritating)
1.
Cause annoyance in; disturb, especially by minor irritations.  Synonyms: annoy, bother, chafe, devil, get at, get to, gravel, nark, nettle, rag, rile, vex.  "It irritates me that she never closes the door after she leaves"
2.
Excite to an abnormal condition, or chafe or inflame.  Antonym: soothe.
3.
Excite to some characteristic action or condition, such as motion, contraction, or nervous impulse, by the application of a stimulus.





WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University


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"Irritating" Quotes from Famous Books



... Away from its irritating context, that stanza is delightful; with the context it is to me wholly meaningless. The boy and girl had not fallen in love—there is no more to say; and I heartily wish that Browning had not tried to say it. The whole lyric is based on nothingness, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... her off into one of those long paths of wondering, paths which sometimes seemed to circle the whole of the globe. It was on those paths she frequently found the man who mended the boats waiting for her. Sometimes he was irritating, turning off into little by-paths, by-paths leading off to the dim source of things. Katie could not follow him there; she did not know her way; and often, as to-day, he turned off there just when she was most eager to ask him something. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... on the limestone crag, of almost miraculous hideousness. It is also in so-called Byzantine architecture. There is a dish-cover which serves as a dome, and a tower which would be comical if it were not irritating. It resembles the handle of a renaissance knife or fork stuck into a sheath and standing upright with a figure at top. We have made a blunder at South Kensington in setting side by side a depressed dome—the Albert Hall, and the acute ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... that these people were unhappy, not because they had not, so to speak, nourishing food, but because their stomachs had been spoiled, and because their appetites demanded not nourishing but irritating viands; and I did not perceive that, in order to help them, it was not necessary to give them food, but that it was necessary to heal their disordered stomachs. Although I am anticipating by so doing, I will mention here, that, out of all these persons whom I noted ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... certain charm to his manner. Without attaching any weight to the fancy Miss Wycliffe had told him of, he was sufficiently human to enjoy being liked and to make some response. At his first meeting with Mrs. Parr she had seemed merely insignificant; at Littleford's he had found her irritating; now, to his astonishment, he discovered in her worship of Felicity her attractive side. When they finally left the shop with their accumulated purchases, she insisted that he follow her into the sleigh and go to her home for a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins


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