Definition of "provoking" []

• Troubling the nerves or peace of mind, as by repeated vexations: a provoking delay at the airport. (adjective)

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.

• "Being thought-provoking is its point, and a useful but limited end in itself."
• "Faux news representatives are real world Pied Pipers of Hamelin provoking and leading frightened and irrational Republican lemmings to financial/medical ruin and self-assisted health care suicide."
• "But what I said was much more precise (and worked marvelously in provoking these guys to make fools of themselves, not that this is difficult): as a matter of science, the way an exception proofs a rule is precisely a test: if it is true that objects fall at the same speed whether they are heavy or light, then how can it also be true that a feather falls more slowly?"