Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use rile in a sentence

20 example sentences · verb

Rile means to stir or move from a state of calm or order. Example: “Money problems rile the underpaid worker every day.”

Examples of rile by meaning

verbTo stir or move from a state of calm or order.

  • Money problems rile the underpaid worker every day.
  • Mosquitoes buzzing in my ear really rile me.
  • It riles me that she never closes the door after she leaves.

verbTo make angry.

  • Nothing riles an anti-mosque demonstrator more than being called a bigot.2010 August 30, Charlie Brooker, “Buzzwords for blowhards”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 30 May 2023
  • Riled by a decision that went against him, Ziv kicked his displaced boot at the assistant referee and, after a short consultation between the officials, he was given his marching orders and the loudest cheer of the night.2011 October 20, Michael da Silva, “Stoke 3 - 0 Macc Tel-Aviv”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 26 Feb 2022
  • Francis riled conservative cardinals with his compassion for migrants and refugees, openness towards LGBTQ+ Catholics and demands for action on the climate crisis.2025 May 8, Angela Giuffrida and Harriet Sherwood, “White smoke from Sistine Chapel chimney signals election of new pope”, in The Guardian...

More sentences with rile

  • Jack didn't look in the least riled by the grit in his hair.2014, Susan May Warren, Nothing But Trouble, Tyndale House Publishers, →ISBN, page 89. From the entry water diaper
  • Indeed, in recent years, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) "abolished" the Quaternary, according to riled quaternarists.2008 January 25, Richard A. Kerr, “A Time War Over the Period We Live In”, in Science, 319(5862), page 402. From the entry quaternarist
  • 'Plague take the fists of lust-ridden sailors,' snapped the herbalist in riled temper.1999, Janny Wurts, Grand Conspiracy (Wars of Light and Shadow; 5), London: Voyager, →ISBN, page 283. From the entry meatbrain
  • Nothing riled English high churchmen more than the phrase Protestant church.1966, Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, volume 1, page 174. From the entry high churchman
  • The audience was welcome and open-eared but also intrigued and riled up, and that's what Burton gave back to them.2018 February 21, Mike West, “George Burton takes the audience on a wild ride”, in The Washington Post, archived from the original on 09…. From the entry open-eared
  • What particularly riled me was his assertion that certain poets chose un-fame so that they could write sloppily ..2014, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Stephen Bann, Midway: Letters from Ian Hamilton Finlay to Stephen Bann 1964-69. From the entry unfame
  • You rile me to beat the band sometimes, Skinner.1922, Peter B. Kyne, chapter 54, in Cappy Ricks Retires. From the entry to beat the band
  • "You're a liar," says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree.1904, O. Henry, “The Handbook of Hymen”, in Heart of the West. From the entry up a tree
  • To rile up some Tarantino nerds?2018, John Semley, Hater: On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability, Viking, →ISBN. From the entry nolanite
  • Consumers riled up about Apple's Batterygate.2017 December 30, Jefferson Graham, “Apple's apology for Batterygate didn't go far enough”, in USA TODAY. From the entry Batterygate
  • Riling people to the point of stupidity is a poor litmus test of their decency, no matter how red and blue their faces get.2000, Dirt First!, “Re: Thanks for all the fish, but I'm vegetarian”, in comp.lang.perl.misc (Usenet). From the entry bozon
  • “That’s riled them,” said my compaion.1918, Denis Garstin, The Shilling Soldiers, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 83. From the entry what
  • To rile their professors, South Carolina students staged 'blackrides,' when they blackened their faces, stole the horses of faculty, and galloped about campus while holding flaming torches.2019, Alan Taylor, Thomas Jefferson's Education, page 97. From the entry blackride
  • Such ambiguity riled Russia's foreign space partners, who were torn between asking IKI to refly Mars '96 with backup instruments or to pull the plug on the mission.1997 June 20, Richard Stone, “SPACE: Russia's Last Shot at Space”, in Science, volume 276, number 5320, →DOI, pages 1780–1782. From the entry refly

Meaning of rile

  1. verb To stir or move from a state of calm or order.
  2. verb To make angry.

Full definition of rile

Questions about rile in a sentence

How do you use rile in a sentence?
Rile is used as a verb. For example: “Money problems rile the underpaid worker every day.”
What is a short sentence with rile?
“Consumers riled up about Apple's Batterygate.”
What does rile mean?
Rile means to stir or move from a state of calm or order.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rile (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 rile in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/rile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.