unprovoke

present singular third person unprovokes · participle present unprovoking · participle past unprovoked · past unprovoked

1. To undo or counter a provocation.

   Then we'll just have to unprovoke him.

   1987, William Safire, Freedom, page 758

   5 more examples

   Lechery, sir, it provokes and it unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery

   1606, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth

   Just as we in the West say that wine provokes the desire and unprovokes the performance, so in Cipangu they say that Oleander-tea unprovokes the desire but provokes the performance.

   1988, MacDonald Harris, The Cathay Stories and Other Fictions, page 90

   Furthermore, I consider political information as catalyst for informatic dialectics; a tranquilizer and of course, an equivocator which can provoke and unprovoke

   2004, Adele Jinadu, Olatunde Oloko, Crisis of Democratization, Development and Electoral Violence in Nigeria

   The equivocating Pandulph provokes and unprovokes, damns and absolves, uncrowns and crowns almost from scene to scene.

   2005, Joseph Rosenblum, The Greenwood companion to Shakespeare, →ISBN, page 177

   Volpone, in a desperate attempt to undo his own overreaching, to "unprovoke" his lawyer Voltore — "When I provoked him, then I lost myself" [5.11.22] — must falsify the brief and uncharacteristically true pleading of Voltore on the grounds he is possessed:

   2009, Ian McAdam, Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama, page 293