irritate

What it means

1. transitiveTo provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.

   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

   2 more examples

   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

   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

   Synonyms: provoke, rile, aggravate, annoy, nettle, rankle, ruffle, sting · Antonyms: placate, please, soothe

2. intransitiveTo cause or induce displeasure or irritation.

   Synonyms: abrade, chafe, grate, rankle

3. transitiveTo induce pain in (all or part of a body or organism).

   [L]ike as by yeerly acceſſe and anniverſarie revolutions, the forcible vigor of the peſtilence returneth for to irritate and provoke all Aſia; […]

   1603, Plutarch, “What Passions and Maladies Be Worse, Those of the Soule or Those of the Bodie?”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Philosophie, Commonlie Called, The Morals […], London: […] Arnold Hatfield, →OCLC, page 314

   Synonyms: afflict, pang, ache, afflict, aggrieve, agonize, anguish, dere

In a sentence

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

Where it comes from

1. Latinirrītātus
2. Englishirritate

Borrowed from Latin irrītātus, perfect passive participle of irrītō (“excite, irritate, incite, stimulate”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).