Definition of "agitate" []

• To cause to move with violence or sudden force. (verb-transitive)
• To upset; disturb: was agitated by the alarming news. (verb-transitive)
• To arouse interest in (a cause, for example) by use of the written or spoken word; debate. (verb-transitive)
• To stir up public interest in a cause: agitate for a tax reduction. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The real question which this Society wishes to agitate is whether they do not furnish the best remedy for settling all disputes."
• "The story, though it will not greatly rouse or deeply agitate, is yet sufficiently interesting to excite and prolong the attention of the reader; and the phraseology is at once correct and appropriate."
• "People like the McLemores fear that Sam, her mother, and her mother's artist friend, Perry, are in the South to "agitate" and to shake up the dividing lines between black and white and blur it all to grey."