irritate

The trial “will get Beijing’s attention and irritate them,” said Jonathan Czin, a China expert at the Brookings Institution.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

We had little in common except the sisterly urge to irritate each other and our daily detente to watch “Saved by the Bell” for an hour after school.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026

In larger amounts, it can also irritate the body, sometimes leading to skin rashes or digestive discomfort.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 17, 2026

The justices have already dealt with the contraceptive mandate and the Little Sisters twice, and this latest challenge seems designed to irritate them.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 22, 2025

Even the flickering fluorescent light didn’t irritate him very much.

From "A Boy Called Bat" by Elana K. Arnold

While some men’s inability to see a queer relationship right before their eyes irritates Rosales, she uses these opportunities to clown.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026

"What irritates me most is when people think you're public property," he says.

From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2026

Talk of an eventual rebound irritates investors like Christopher Poch, whose firm Promethium Advisors owns 11,000 Whirlpool shares.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026

But when it goes away, so do our nightly doses of Colbert’s affable clowning, the kind that irritates thin-skinned despots in a way other comics can’t quite match.

From Salon ● May 21, 2026

Everything irritates me, and cheery people just make that worse.

From "The Running Dream" by Wendelin Van Draanen

Athens in turn has been irritated by a Turkish plan to enshrine into domestic law claims over parts of the Aegean.

From Barron's ● Jul. 31, 2026

One imagines irritated Michigan Wolverines burning checkbooks and disavowing money-market accounts as they drink their spritzes at Ann Arbor tailgates—but inside Columbus, this is like getting to sponsor religion.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026

Her in-laws had a different reaction: “We were showing them the house, and they got more irritated with every room — like, ‘You have books in here too?’

From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2026

But “if you start to feel irritation, or your eyes are stinging or watering, or your nose is beginning to run or feel irritated, that’s a little more serious.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 21, 2026

As the princess sat up the slumbering fairy tumbled from her hair to the ground, where she woke up as well, only a lot less scared and a lot more irritated.

From "Half Upon a Time" by James Riley

It said the tell-tale signs of bedbugs include red, irritating bites and small blood smears on bed linen; and small brown insects in or around the sleeping area.

From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026

Letisha Lucas, a 33-year-old tourist from Canada -- which has its own wildfires happening -- said the smoke smell was immediately obvious on arrival in Madrid "and very irritating on the throat".

From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026

Yes, this host of self-promoting reminders masked as birthday wishes had an artificial, irritating aspect.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

L.A. city officials said Saturday they expected to declare a state of emergency as firefighters continue to battle a stubborn warehouse fire in Boyle Heights that has sent plumes of irritating smoke across the region.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 20, 2026

He explained to me, in a bloody irritating whisper, that he personally had no objection to smoking, but that, alas, the school’s policy was against smoking in the instructors’ room.

From "Nine Stories" by J. D. Salinger