vexation

Holly is already known to police because she’s in the habit of sneaking into the house where she grew up and sleeping there overnight, to the vexation of the current owners.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026

"You might be feeling a familiar vexation at the sight of these two formerly innocuous numerals," Dictionary.com said, addressing parents as it announced the winner this week.

From Barron's ● Oct. 30, 2025

Strange, too, that so few books deal substantively with a near-universal vexation, by which I mean the tax system.

From New York Times ● Apr. 13, 2024

These “scenes from country life,” as the play is subtitled, are full of vexation, longing, frustration and endless complaints of boredom.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 7, 2022

Emma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more indistinctness in the causes of her’s, than in his.

From "Emma" by Jane Austen

Ahead of Sunday’s election for a new parliament and government, those vexations are being heard again as the European Union country’s two main parties, the center-left Socialists and the center-right Social Democrats, compete for power.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 27, 2022

He owns his theaters outright, a saving grace, though one of his biggest vexations is his property taxes, which, for the Alpine Cinemas alone, topped $316,000 this year, to his lasting chagrin.

From New York Times ● Oct. 27, 2020

By now, the litany of vexations is well known: the jammed phone lines, the hours on hold, the online system that balks and crashes, the inexplicable responses to re-file and then re-file again.

From Washington Times ● Jun. 17, 2020

Bach’s vexations, his rages, his blind spots, even his hatreds, are our own.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 25, 2016

For her sonne William perished by shipwrack, and her daughter Matild was neuer voyd of great vexations.

From The Lives of the III Normans, Kings of England: William the First, William the Second, Henrie the First by John Hayward