irritate

Questions about irritate

What is another word for irritate?

It depends which irritate you mean. In the sense “cause annoyance in; disturb, especially by minor irritations”, the synonyms are annoy, rag, get to, bother, get at, rile, nark, nettle, gravel, vex, chafe, devil. Across all 3 senses there are 12 distinct synonyms, and they are not interchangeable with each other — this page lists them under the sense each one belongs to.

What is the opposite of irritate?

The recorded antonym is soothe. Opposites are sense-specific too: this page shows which meaning each one is the opposite of, because a word rarely has a single opposite that holds for all of its senses.

Why are the synonyms for irritate split into groups?

Because irritate carries 3 recorded senses and each has its own set of substitutes. A single flat list would put words from unrelated meanings side by side with nothing to tell them apart, which is exactly how a writer picks the wrong one. The grouping comes from WordNet's synsets, not from an editorial judgement of ours.

Where do the synonyms for irritate come from?

From Princeton University's WordNet, a lexical database maintained by lexicographers since 1985. A synonym here means a word form that shares a synset with this word — a set of forms interchangeable in one recorded context. Nothing on this page is generated by a language model.

Other views of irritate

• Full entry for irritateAll 3 senses, with examples, usage labels, syllables and pronunciation.
• Rhymes for irritateWords matching from the last stressed vowel onward, grouped by syllable count.
• Thesaurus homeHow WordNet synsets work, and the collections built for synonym work.