Word.ws English Dictionary

provocates

provocates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of provocate.

Meaning of provocate

Verb

provocate (third-person singular simple present provocates, present participle provocating, simple past and past participle provocated)

  1. (now nonstandard and non-native speakers' English) To provoke.
    • The movie called It is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse But the Society In Which He Lives was a provocating movie. It dramatized the situation and got hard reactions from the gays and the straights. But when you look at it now it is full of hate. And it was OK, in a way, to provocate, but it was...1981 December 12, Michael Bronski, Frank Ripploh, “The Meter Is Still Running”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 21, page 8
  2. To call forth.
  3. To challenge.

Questions about provocates

What is provocates the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Provocates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of provocate.

Words near provocates in the dictionary

  1. provocable
  2. provocant
  3. provocants
  4. provocate
  5. provocated
  6. provocates
  7. provocateur
  8. provocateurs
  9. provocateuse
  10. provocateuses
  11. provocating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: provocates (page history and authors); provocate (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.

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Cite this entry: “provocates.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/provocates. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.