irk
UK/ɜːk//ɝk/
irk verb: to irritate; annoy; bother.
Verb
irk (third-person singular simple present irks, present participle irking, simple past and past participle irked)
- to irritate; annoy; bother
- It irks me doing all this work and have someone wreck it.
- Let no man pray to Māna-Yood-Sushāī, for who shall trouble Māna with mortal woes or irk him with the sorrows of all the houses of Earth?1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, […], →OCLC
Noun
irk (plural irks)
- An annoyance.
- The trade-off between computation cost and precision results in tuning parameters […] being exposed to the user, a major irk to practitioners of data science.2022, Philipp Hennig, Michael A. Osborne, Hans P. Kersting, Probabilistic Numerics, page 13
Proper noun capitalized: Irk
Irk
- A river in Greater Manchester, England, which joins the River Irwell in Manchester city centre.
irk meaning in Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
irk in Urdu
- دق کرنا, مشتعل کرنا, تنگ کرنا
irk in Bengali
- বিরক্ত, উত্ত্যক্ত করা
irk in Malayalam
- ശല്യപ്പെടുത്തുക, ശുണ്ഠിപിടിപ്പിക്കുക, ആയാസപ്പെടുത്തുക, ക്ഷീണിപ്പിക്കുക
Examples of irk in a sentence
- John's mischief, tying his shoelaces together, irked George at first.
- What irks is the DfT's response of stringing the industry along.
- Nothing irks me more than when people call me a Horse Whisperer.
Forms of irk
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | irks |
| present participle | irking |
| past participle | irked |
| past | irked |
| Noun | |
| plural | irks |
Origin of irk
Inherited from Middle English irken (“to tire, grow weary”), from Old Norse yrkja (“to work”), from Proto-Germanic *wurkijaną (“to work”), from Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- (“to work”). Cognate with Icelandic yrkja (“to compose”), Swedish yrka (“to urge, argue”), Old English wyrċan (“to work”). Doublet of work.
Words formed from irk
Words that rhyme with irk
Questions about irk
- What does irk mean?
- Irk means to irritate; annoy; bother.
- What is irk in Urdu?
- Irk in Urdu is دق کرنا, مشتعل کرنا, تنگ کرنا. See Irk meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is irk?
- Irk can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce irk?
- Irk is pronounced /ɜːk/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of irk?
- The past tense of irk is irked.
Words near irk in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: irk (page history and authors); Irk (page history and authors); irk (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); irk (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); irk (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-irk.ogg.
Cite this entry: “irk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/irk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.