Provoking \Pro*vok"ing\, a. Having the power or quality of exciting resentment; tending to awaken passion or vexation; as, provoking words or treatment. -- Pro*vok"ing*ly, adv.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
 

Provoke \Pro*voke"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Provoked; p. pr. & vb. n. Provoking.]

[F. provoquer, L. provocare to call forth; pro forth + vocare to call, fr. vox, vocis, voice, cry, call. See Voice.]

To call forth; to call into being or action; esp., to incense to action, a faculty or passion, as love, hate, or ambition; hence, commonly, to incite, as a person, to action by a challenge, by taunts, or by defiance; to exasperate; to irritate; to offend intolerably; to cause to retaliate.

Obey his voice, provoke him not. --Ex. xxiii. 21.

Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. --Eph. vi. 4.

Such acts Of contumacy will provoke the Highest To make death in us live. --Milton.

Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust? --Gray.

To the poet the meaning is what he pleases to make it, what it provokes in his own soul. -- J. Burroughs.

Syn: To irritate; arouse; stir up; awake; excite; incite; anger. See Irritate.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)