Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use irritate in a sentence

10 example sentences · verb

Irritate means to provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in. Example: “It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.”

Examples of irritate by meaning

verbTo provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.

  • It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The...

More sentences with irritate

  • I think in general, it irritates me when straight people are allies and proclaim their straighthood.2006, Daniel K. Cortese, Are We Thinking Straight?. From the entry straighthood
  • Liquid and gel-type make-up removers are less likely to irritate your eyes than oil-based products.2005 April 9, Grace Amey-Obeng, “Emergency fix ups, cleaning-up”, in The Mirror, page 21, column 2. From the entry make-up remover
  • Sometimes guys with BPH who strain to pee irritate their pelvic floor, leading them to develop prostatitis, too.2026, Kevin Dupzyk, “The Semi-Complete User's Guide to Your Prostate”, in Men's Health, volume 41, number 2, page 21. From the entry BPH
  • It doesn't irritate the skin, eyes or lungs.2025 May 1, Jen Schwartz, “The magic molecule”, in Scientific American, volume 332, number 5, pages 54-55. From the entry hypochlorous acid
  • Don't irritate with grossly irrelevant or overly salesy messages.2011, R. Scott Corbett, How to Make Money with Email Marketing. From the entry salesy
  • He even forgets about the great sum he loses, but perpetually irritates himself with his own suckerish imagination.1934, Bangkok Review, volume 1, number 3, page 18. From the entry suckerish
  • The citrate is the most efficient as an alkali, but irritates some stomachs, the liquor the most anodyne, the acetate the most diuretic.1910, Edward L. Keyes, Diseases of the Genito-Urinary Organs, page 211. From the entry anodyne
  • But whatever you think of Bieber, the adverts are questionable for reasons other than the singer's reputation for being an aggy teenager with an unfortunate tendency to offend and irritate.2015 January 7, Ella Alexander, “GLAMOUR debates: Justin Bieber x Calvin Klein pics”, in Glamour UK. From the entry aggy
  • And, again, the capitalist class is divided; it has within itself a class struggle of no mean proportions, which tends to irritate and harass it and to confuse the situation.1905 April, Jack London, “(please specify the page)”, in War of the Classes, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan &…. From the entry cohesion

Meaning of irritate

  1. verb To provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.
  2. verb To cause or induce displeasure or irritation.
  3. verb To induce pain in (all or part of a body or organism).

Full definition of irritate

Questions about irritate in a sentence

How do you use irritate in a sentence?
Irritate is used as a verb. For example: “It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.”
What is a short sentence with irritate?
“It doesn't irritate the skin, eyes or lungs.”
What does irritate mean?
Irritate means to provoke impatience, anger, or displeasure in.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: irritate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use irritate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/irritate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.