What is "provoking"

Usage examples of "provoking".

He had managed to annoy everyone, provoking his sister Yllana, his foster-sister Alanna, and Ida Davidson, who was usually impervious to the behavior of adolescents.

Lady Trent had spoken more truly than she knew, and would have been as much surprised as dismayed to have learnt that her provoking niece, having repulsed two very eligible suitors, had discovered that no less a personage than the Nonesuch would do for her.

Sussex dialect often sending Emma potty, provoking her into having her own back by taking him off or belabouring him with rolled-up magazines.

She tried merely reminding you of your incestuous relationship -- the least provoking thing she could imagine to do that might give her a breathing spell.

Because after provoking Fracto into hiding them with the blizzard, he had stopped using his mind and just slogged ahead physically.

Orchidaceae, its wiles arrayed in every deceitful variation of shape and odour, colour and design to target randy insects with spurious promises of sex and nectar provoking frenzies of pseudocopulation and the consequent deposit of their pollen elsewhere it would do the most good, rearing up with was that the phone?

You upset people, fondly imagining you are provoking reactions in the process.

Apis, represented by a bull, was the living and sensible image of the Sun or Osiris, when in union with Isis or the Moon at the Vernal Equinox, concurring with her in provoking everything that lives to generation.

They love to show the shots of a Garda defending himself at a demonstration but they never show the gurriers in the crowd provoking us.

In a minute listen, made headlines recently when a small dog named Spot, trapped in its interstices, was killed when the towering structure was struck by lightning, provoking a nationwide outpouring of grief.

In the course of the weeks that followed, the two of us emptied over a dozen little packages of fizz powder, mostly with woodruff flavoring, then, when the woodruff ran out, lemon or raspberry, according to the very same ritual, making it fizz with my saliva, and so provoking a sensation which Maria came to value more and more.

Nothing can be more provoking to the human temper, nor more dangerous to that cardinal virtue, patience, than solicitations of extraordinary offices of kindness on behalf of those very persons with whom we are highly incensed.

Since early 1999, Iraqi air defense forces have been shooting at coalition planes patrolling the no-fly zones on an almost daily basis, provoking the coalition pilots to respond in self-defense from time to time.

He might have foreseen a violent death, for throughout his life he was always provoking men to the point of despair.

Mirth provoking was the hyena that stopped out of range by an alkali lake to look back and, hit in the chest, went over on his back, his four feet and his full belly in the air.