provocative
/pɹəˈvɒk.ə.tɪv/US/pɹəˈvɑ.kə.tɪv/
provocative adjective: serving or tending to elicit a strong, often negative sentiment in another person; exasperating.
Adjective
provocative (comparative more provocative, superlative most provocative)
- Serving or tending to elicit a strong, often negative sentiment in another person; exasperating.
- Synonyms:
- agitative
- Serving or tending to excite, stimulate or arouse sexual interest; sexy.
- Provoking or triggering any response.
- [I]t is a terrible long and slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there is a pleasant public; whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for the down air is provocative of thirst.1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days
- And the ‘wailing noise,’ which had induced the prosaic, indurated London cabman to get twice off his box to see what was the matter, what anguish had been provocative of that?1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle
Noun
provocative (plural provocatives)
- Something that provokes an appetite, especially a sexual appetite; an aphrodisiac.
- She used by way of Provocative, to read the wanton Verses of her Paramour in the day time [...].1723, Charles Walker, Memoirs of the Life of Sally Salisbury
- [A]nd that one great and all-important occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the rise of self-consciousness — that is, the coming of the mind to a more or less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of...1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., page 165
provocative meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam
provocative in Hindi
- tending to provoke strong negative feeling
- उत्तेजक uttejak
- tending to arouse sexual interest
- उत्तेजक uttejak, कामुक kāmuk
provocative in Tamil
- தூண்டி நோய் நாடல்
provocative in Bengali
- provocative
- উত্তেজক uttejôk
provocative in Malayalam
- അഗ്നിവർഷകൗഷധം, എരിച്ചിൽ, പ്രോത്സാഹകസാധനം, ഉദ്ദീപകമായ, ദ്വേഷമുളവാക്കുന്ന
More languagesFewer languages
- provocative in Arabic
- مُسْتَفِز mustafiz
- provocative in Indonesian
- provokatif
Examples of provocative in a sentence
- Drawing the rhetorical distinction between the "people like yourselves" at the overwhelmingly white rally and "those people" protesting was, needless to say, a provocative framing of the issue.
- They are being deliberately provocative, so they can portray railway workers as 'troublesome trots'.
- But Martin’s increasingly provocative ideas throw a wrench in Elena’s dreams of a happily-ever-after.
Synonyms of provocative
Forms of provocative
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more provocative |
| superlative | most provocative |
| Noun | |
| plural | provocatives |
Origin of provocative
Borrowed from Middle French provocatif, and its source, Late Latin provocativus, from Latin provocare.
Words formed from provocative
Questions about provocative
- What does provocative mean?
- Provocative means serving or tending to elicit a strong, often negative sentiment in another person; exasperating.
- What is provocative in Hindi?
- Provocative in Hindi is उत्तेजक (uttejak), कामुक (kāmuk). See Provocative meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is provocative?
- Provocative can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce provocative?
- Provocative is pronounced /pɹəˈvɒk.ə.tɪv/ (UK).
Words near provocative in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: provocative (page history and authors); provocative (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); উত্তেজক (Bengali) (page history and authors); provocative (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-provocative.wav.
Cite this entry: “provocative.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/provocative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.