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Exasperation   /ˌɛksˌæspərˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Exasperation

noun
1.
An exasperated feeling of annoyance.  Synonym: aggravation.
2.
Actions that cause great irritation (or even anger).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Exasperation" Quotes from Famous Books



... with much asperity of manner, inquires of Mr. Bouncer (as footman) if Lady Trotter is informed that the Ladies Louisa and Arabella Mountfidget are waiting to see her? Mr. Bouncer replies, with a footman's bow, and a footman's hexasperation of his h's, "Me lady is haweer hof your ladyships' visit; but me lady is at present hunable to happear: me lady, 'owever, has give me a message, which she hasks me to deliver to your ladyships." Then why don't you ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... too complex to satisfy senses which need to analyze a single sensation. They are vanity, and in themselves they represent simulacra and parodies of actual life. And yet they form the world of our children, in which they are constrained to "consume" their potential powers in a continuous exasperation, which ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... this point that, directed by love and etiquette, Mr. O'Grady knocked at the door. Mrs. O'Reilly was again cutting the loaf in an exasperation which was partly hunger and partly maternal, and, as she cut, she ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... of the Olenia was having his first taste of the unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation surging in him, but he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... his thoughts was a confused sense of humiliation and of exasperation against his brother. The anger he felt had nearly been expressed in a murderous deed not more than two or three hours earlier, and the wish to strike was still present in his mind. He twisted his lips into an ugly smile as he recalled the scene in every detail; but the determination ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... had invented as if it were a common name stuck up over every huckster-shop in the town? He never stumbled over a letter or forgot a syllable. The name had bitten fast in his brain and struck root on the instant. I got annoyed; an inward exasperation surged up in me against this creature whom nothing had the power to disturb and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... which is characteristic of villany and despotism cannot endure the thought of forfeiting his own, but betrays a cowardice proportioned to his recent insolence. The king returning at the moment in a state of the utmost exasperation, imputed the worst motives to his suppliant attitude, and allowed his servants to rush forward and cover Haman's face, as a person under sentence of death. The miserable criminal had, probably, many flatterers ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... angry girl's face grew even redder, so that now she resembled no longer a carrot but a wet beetroot. The only person in the room to be refreshingly and youthfully indignant, and all aflame with a deep anger, she looked truly beautiful in her ingenuous exasperation. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... as to the purity of their motives,—it is certain that our Northern feelings toward slave-holders, and the expressions of those feelings in ways which have been applauded among us for many years, are the real causes of the irritation and exasperation which have brought us ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... Adolphe executes a movement in retreat, detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north wind which had never before blown in ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... effectual manifestation of that nervous, defiant consciousness of other people which haunted him all his life. He felt that all the men and women whom he passed on his way through the world were at watch upon him, and mostly with no very favourable intentions. The exasperation of all those eyes fixed upon him, the absorbing, the protesting self-consciousness which they called forth in him, drove him, in spite of himself, to set about explaining himself to other people, to the world in general. His anxiety to explain, not to justify, himself was after all a kind ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... tray again with a hint of exasperation. "You're just like a child," she said severely. "A great, overgrown boy, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... never been enough for me. The impenetrable immortality of all our bodies has been a constant source of exasperation ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... mountain wall, slink in its increasing glow, watch it furtively from the cover of near-by brush, unprepared and half uncertain of its identity until it rode clear of the peaks, and finally make off with all the air of one caught napping by an ancient joke. The moon in its wanderings must be a sort of exasperation to cunning beasts, likely to spoil by untimely risings some fore-planned mischief. But to take the trail again; the coyotes that are astir in the Ceriso of late afternoons, harrying the rabbits from their shallow forms, and the hawks that sweep and swing above them, are not there from ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... together with the extent and fastnesses of the country occupied, it will readily occur that simple indiscretions, acts of harshness, and cruelty on the part of our troops may lead, step by step, to delays, to impatience, and exasperation, and in the end to a general war and carnage—a result in the case of these particular Indians, utterly abhorrent to the generous sympathies of the whole American people. Every possible kindness compatible with the necessity of removal must therefore be shown by the troops; and if in the ranks a ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... Roger, making a comical face at her, "my countenance now presents an expression typical of disgust, irritation, and impatience. I now wave my right hand thus, which is a Delsarte gesture expressing exasperation with a trace of anger. I next give voice to my sentiments, merely to remark in my usual calm and disinterested way, that a belt has broken and the mending thereof will consume a portion of time, the length of which may be estimated only after ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... "There's nothing more pernicious on earth than a rascally liberal paper," and told us that, apparently, the peasants whom he doctors, having got his advice and medicine free of charge, ask him for a tip. He and S. speak of the peasants with exasperation ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

... 1871 believed the Assembly to have betrayed the cause of France by ceding her eastern districts, and to be on the point of handing over the Republic to the Monarchists. A fit of hysteria, or hypochondria, brought on by the exhausting siege and by exasperation at the triumphal entry of the Germans, added the touch of fury which enabled the Radicals of Paris to challenge the national authorities and thereafter to persist in their defiance with ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... had been resisting his realization of failure. Now he gave way to an exasperation that made him reckless of Brighton-Pomfrey's opinion. "I do think," he said, "that that drug did in some way make God real to me. I think ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... have—which happened every day—they had either to make it or else, failing in that, to go back and build something that would enable them to manufacture the required item. Such setbacks had become so numerous as to be expected as part of the day's work; they no longer caused exasperation or annoyance. For two days the two jacks-of-all-trades worked at many lines and with many materials ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... two o'clock when he finally quieted Mrs. LeMasters, using a small oil can on the hinges and a few honeyed words upon her ruffled spirits. He drew a deep breath of exasperation and relief as he clambered into his car and drove away. He looked at his watch, paused a moment in deep thought, stopping his car dead in the middle of the street and was almost run over from behind by a nervous, excitable "flivver." The driver ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... long to tell. Alaric treated for peace with the ministers of the emperor. But he met with such bad faith and so many insults that exasperation overcame all his desire for peace, and once more the army of the Goths marched ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... heart sink within her, and John Mangles stood by ready to die in her behalf. His companions bore the deluge of invectives each according to his disposition; the Major with utter indifference, Paganel with exasperation that ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... them or secularize the religious Orders; the reforms demanded were not inaugurated, though the Te Deum was sung. This failure of the Spanish authorities to abide by the terms of the Treaty caused me and my companions much unhappiness, which quickly changed to exasperation when I received a letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Don Miguel Primo de Rivera (nephew and private Secretary of the above-named General) informing me that I and my companions could ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy

... could be accomplished only with the help of an invading army; and although Mary would agree to any measure which would secure Philip, the presence of foreign troops, as the emperor himself was aware, could only increase the exasperation.[227] The queen's resolution, however, grew with her difficulties. If she could not fight she would not yield; and, taking matters into her own hands, she sent Sir Thomas Cornwallis and Sir Edward Hastings to Dartford, with ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... deficiencies in charters granted by the crown. The opposition took a different view of the measure, denouncing it as arbitrary and likely to lead to permanent evils. Thus General Conway could see nothing but increased exasperation, misfortune, and ruin from the adoption of such measures; and he, with other members, asked for more time, and demanded that the province should be heard before an act was passed which would deprive its people ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... not take it at all well. Lydgate was as polite as he could be in his offhand way, but politeness in a man who has placed you at a disadvantage is only an additional exasperation, especially if he happens to have been an object of dislike beforehand. Country practitioners used to be an irritable species, susceptible on the point of honor; and Mr. Wrench was one of the most irritable among them. He did ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... difficult paths which they chose in preference to travelled roads, while the dogs,—for the peninsula seemed to them to be principally peopled by dogs,—by their unceasing chorus of barks, right, left, and in front, kept them in a state of nervous exasperation. Many times did they turn from their course through fear of detection from these vociferous guardians ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... processes that I do not care in appropriate terms to describe." "The people of this country are generous and just, they are jealous also, and when discontent changes to resentment, and resentment passes into exasperation, one volume of a nation's history is closed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... Grunting with exasperation, Staff bent over a trunk and stuffed things into it until Milly committed herself to the definite announcement: "I don't seem to find ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... and even the most modest, intentions, he found himself—to his bewilderment and surprise—sniffed at by the ungenerous, frowned upon by the impatient, and smiled down by the good-natured in a manner that brought sudden blushes of exasperation to his face, and often made him ashamed to find himself going over these sham battles again in much savageness of spirit, when alone with his books; or, in moments of weakness, casting about for ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... over the men in utter bewilderment and most times terror, then I would force myself to a little more forgetting and poor Mr. Carter must have suffered the consequences. But all that was a mild sort of exasperation to what a widow has to go through with in the matter of—of, well I think hazing is about the ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... which his unprincipled ancestors had escaped. It is difficult for us, in the sympathy which is excited for the comparatively innocent Maria Antoinette and Louis, to remember the ages of wrong and outrage by which the popular exasperation had been raised to wreak itself in indiscriminating atrocities. There is but one solution to these mysteries: "After ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... appeared to be in a great rage, swore he would have revenge of his insulting neighbour, and pull him up. The exasperation of the Jew afforded much merriment to the spectators, who seemed to enjoy his aggravation: our friends, however, had arrived too late to discover the cause, and although not very particular about discovering themselves amid the mob, conceived it ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... accompaniment it was impossible, anywhere in the civilized world, to dine correctly. That rag-time, committed, I suppose, originally by some well-intentioned if banal composer in the privacy of his study one night, had spread over the whole universe of restaurants like a pest, to the exasperation of the sensitive, but evidently to the joy of correct diners. Joy shone in the elated eyes of the four hundred persons correctly dining together in this high refectory, and at the end there was honest applause!... And yet you never encountered a person who, questioned singly, did not ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... men were all bachelors, with no families to found or houses to keep up in England. The farmer might get half price for his wool and pay more than one price for whatever he was obliged to buy. There was plenty of private exasperation, but no open fighting, against this ruling of the London markets by Hamburg, Luebeck, Antwerp and Cologne. Cabot's clear head and wide experience plainly showed him the enormous waste of such a system, but he did not see how to unlock the harbors. Neither, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... the Baron in exasperation, "you are maddening. When you are politest, I fume and strike ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... with fury, with exasperation, as though he would devour her, Alexey Nikolaitch said in ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... time their boat was moored to the crags, the Lunda boys and their chief were standing there, all grinning from ear to ear. As for Gloy, he was all "one huge laugh," Yaspard said, with some exasperation in his tone. ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... goin' to put up them bills sence day 'fore yesterday," said Anderson Crow, with exasperation in his voice, "an he ain't done it yet. The agent fer the troupe left 'em here an' hired Mark, but he's so thunderation slow that he won't paste 'em up 'til after the show's been an' gone. I'll give him a talkin' ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... "winged words" of Victor Hugo have recently given him in the Assembly has called forth sarcastic insinuations and bitter diatribes from all the Conservative journals. There seems to be an intensity of exasperation, arising from the ancient prejudice against poets. A poet treating of politics! Let him keep to rhymes, and leave the serious business of life to us practical men, sober-minded men—men not led ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... the unhappy blacks were committed in Jamaica. The assembly of that island, a planter oligarchy, resented the new law from the mother country as an invasion of their constitutional rights, and stubbornly refused in their exasperation, even after a local dissolution, to perform duties that were indispensable for working the machinery of administration. The cabinet in consequence asked parliament (April 9th) to suspend the constitution of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... scathing intonation, and the eyes, so ready to moisten with pity and sympathy at the sight of suffering, could shoot spiteful little fires at the objects of such divine displeasure, and poor Stuyvesant's petulant words, wrung from him in a moment of exasperation and never intended to reach the fair band of sisters of the Cross, were piled high with additions, impolitic, impolite, discourteous, impudent, intolerable, yes, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... exasperation and scorn, her eyes sparkling with anger, and he returned her gaze with his frank and fearless smile. "M'Schlega," the natives called him—"the man who always laughs whether good or bad ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... breakfast-table. The pale, wrought look on Ronald's face as he caught sight of them against the white cloth! No parent's heart could fail to be wrung for the lad's misery; but the futility of it added to the inward exasperation. Thousands of men walking the streets of London vainly seeking for work, while this misguided youth scorned a safe and ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Secretary as the extreme expression of an irrational sentimentalism that was in danger of undermining the American character, especially as the kind of thought he represented was manifest in many phases of American life. In a moment of exasperation, Page gave expression to this feeling in a letter ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... machinery. "Take the Tokyo street cars," said an ex-cabinet officer to me; "the wheels are seldom or never cleaned or oiled, and are half eaten by rust." The railroads are but poorly kept up; the telephones exhaust your patience; while in the case of telegraphing, your exasperation is likely to lose itself in amazed amusement. A few days ago, for example, I sent a telegram from Osaka to Kobe, took my rickshaw across town, waited for a slow train to start, and then reached Kobe and the street destination of my message ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... fast. He had been hard pressed, and now that the strain was over, all the pent passion of that long stress had escaped beyond control. He held her,—at first as a boy might hold a comrade who had provoked him to exasperation; then, as desperately she resisted him, a new element suddenly rushed like fire through his veins, and he realized burningly, overwhelmingly, that for the first time in his life he held a ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... made of one so well able to defend herself. "Words are all very well," said the monk, "but God would not have us believe you, unless you show us some sign." To this Jeanne made an answer more dignified, though still showing signs of exasperation, "I have not come to Poitiers to give signs," she said; "but take me to Orleans—I will then show the signs I am sent to show. Give me as small a band as you please, but ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... we SHALL be together!" the child went on. It made Mrs. Wix look at her as if in exasperation; but nothing had time to come before she precipitated: "Together with YOU!" The air of criticism continued, but took voice only in her companion's bidding her wash herself and come down. The silence of quick ablutions fell upon them, presently broken, however, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... repeated, in a tone of exasperation, "speak! promise that you'll never marry Travilla, or I'll shoot you in three minutes—shoot you down dead on the spot, if I ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... Sheer exasperation held Mrs. Elwood silent for a moment. The Anarchist peered defiantly at her from under her bushy eyebrows. She made no move toward vacating the room of which she had ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... disproportionate to their deserts. Be sufficiently selfish, sufficiently odious, and everybody becomes your humble servant, hat in hand! That is unfair. It is, indeed, quite extensively exasperating to the dispassionate onlooker. And, in Miss St. Quentin's case, exasperation was by no means lessened by the fact that candour compelled her to admit doubt not only as to the actuality of her own dispassionateness, but, as has already been stated, to the wisdom of her mental attitude generally. She ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... me not to have been done to the Democracy of the North. I do not believe that our friends at the South have any just idea of the state of feeling, hurrying at this moment to the pitch of intense exasperation, between those who respect their political obligations and those who have apparently no impelling power but that which fanatical passion on the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... in its tones. A resistance, they little expected, causing them such serious loss, had roused their passions to a pitch of the utmost exasperation; and they tried to allay their spiteful anger by expending it on the dead bodies of those who, while living, had so effectually chastised them. These were slashed and hacked with tomahawks, pierced with spears, and arrows, beaten ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... Blake, bride now of nearly eight hours, lay in a stricken heap upon the bed, bedewing with hot tears the shirt she had so dutifully laid ready for Mr. John Blake, and which now he was never more to wear. And Mr. John Blake, in a hurricane of fear, exasperation and bewilderment, a taxicab, and the swift-falling darkness, fared from hotel to hotel and demanded speech with Mrs. John Blake, a young lady in blue with several handbags and some heavy luggage, who had arrived at some ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... of the postponement of the marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's will, and that she herself ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... shedding was delayed for an instant? Did not the possibility of that innocence, which has been ever since so universally accorded to their victims, once occur to them; or were their minds so under the influence of exasperation and resentment, that they ceased to think of any thing, but the gratification of those feelings? Had they been about to avenge the murder of friends on its known authors, somewhat might have been pardoned ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... him quiet and not let any fool butt in and excite him. That's what I've been giving my mind to. The great stunt was to get him to go and stay at Sir Ormsby's place." He stopped a moment and suddenly flared forth as if he had had about enough of it. He almost shouted at them in exasperation. "All I'm going to tell you is that for about six months I've been trying to prove that Jem Temple Barholm was Jem Temple Barholm, and the hardest thing I had to do was to get him so that he could prove it himself." He strode over ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... was momentary only. Long before he died, the world had found in Max Reger its musical bete noire. Closer acquaintance with his art had not ingratiated him with his public. Indeed, concert-audiences had become bored to the point of exasperation with his classicizing compositions. To most folk, it appeared as though the man saw no other end in composition than the attainment of the opus-number One Thousand. And although his works are rife with the sort of technical problems and solutions which those initiated into ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... went away. Then Boule de Suif was surrounded, questioned, solicited by everybody to reveal the mystery of her visit. First she resisted, but soon exasperation got the best of her.—"What he wants?...what he wants?.... He wants me to keep company with him," she exclaimed. Nobody was shocked by this revelation, so great was their indignation. Cornudet broke his jug as he banged it down on the table. There was a general ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... good-humoured young fellow) quite admired the affair and expressed a desire to do likewise to all the fellaheen in Egypt. I have seen with my own eyes a second boatload of prisoners. I wish to God the Pasha knew the deep exasperation which his subordinates are causing. I do not like to say all I hear. As to the Ulema, Kadees, Muftis, etc., I know many from towns and villages, and all say 'We are Muslims, but we should thank God to send Europeans to govern us,' ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... to do, Mr. Jacobs?" he asked, in a tone that verged on exasperation. "Is there anything else you'd like to see? That window in the lower ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... exclamation, partly of exasperation, partly of relief at finding the man did not consider himself in danger, Inez rose to her feet ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... Almayer, with incomprehensible exasperation. "Devil take you and the table. Stupid! Chatterer! Chelakka! ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... The exasperation of Emerson did not subside, but went on increasing during the next four years, and on March 7, 1854, he read his lecture on the Fugitive Slave Law at the New York Tabernacle: "I have lived all my life without suffering any inconvenience from American Slavery. I never saw it; I never heard the ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... upper left-hand corner the mark of his tailor, a chronic creditor, once patient, then consecutively surprised, annoyed, amazed, and of late showing signs of extreme exasperation accompanied by threats; at the end of the gamut the contents of this would be more vivacious reading than merely the monotonous and colorless repetition of an account rendered. The second was from his dentist, a man spurred to fury, whose extraction of two wisdom ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... would have been hard to say which of the two camps detested the other the more cordially. Under the Empire the machinery worked fairly smoothly, but the Restoration wrought both sides to the highest pitch of exasperation. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... about her jealousy of my secretary, as mine had to express itself about not telling Maurice, Alathea's name,—in both cases we cut off our noses to spite our faces. I was aware of my folly, I do not know if Coralie was aware of hers. Her exasperation so increased in a few moments that she could not control ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... with a feeling of anguished exasperation; it was as if the horror and the shock had congealed ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... more haste since he was unable to repay this courtesy with the most trifling purchase; such slight matters annoyed Kirkwood intensely. Perhaps it was well for him that he had the long walk to help him work off the fit of nervous exasperation into which he was plunged every time his thoughts harked back to that jovial black-guard, Stryker.... He was quite calm when, after a brisk walk of some fifteen minutes, he reached ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... cases of murder, without the semblance of law, had produced much excitement in the North, and now the Fairbanks case was increasing the exasperation of the South. But here was a suffering brother in prison. A few days of earnest prayer determined me to go to Louisville jail with a trunk of bed clothes and under flannels. I looked for strong opposition from my friends, but to my surprise when I proposed the plan to my friends Levi and Catherine ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... Ursula, what you are so much put out about,' said Gudrun, in some exasperation. 'One knows those women are impudent—these free women who have emancipated ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... a prince this reply would have excited exasperation. But Maximilian had established such a character for impartiality and probity, that the rebuke was received with applause rather than with murmurs, and the Protestants, with affectionate zeal, rallied around his standard. So great ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... at me for a moment as though I had been speaking to him in Hottentot, then waved his hands in polite exasperation. ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... properties he had more trouble and some exasperation, for he found the apparently practical and unsentimental Brinnaria oddly unwilling to disturb the contents of the palaces in which her kinsmen had lived and died. She was naturally a good business woman and all her instincts ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... a slight self-consciousness. She wondered what he thought of her and became aware of her unconventionality. His curious and persistent reticence made her frankness the more marked. Yet the painful sensation of oppression and exasperation had passed away from her and she no longer thought of his personality as destructive. In obedience to his last words she walked on, and he kept heavily beside her, till they were in the deep shadows of the closely-growing trees and the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... was absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage but to look the fairer, and, moreover, no woman could live without luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and military men are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sort of exasperation at finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels that he could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he has not sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so he may be great and ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... should be struck at this tendency among the Liege workmen. Had the authors of this latest outrage been captured, an example would have been easy. Unfortunately, they had again escaped, and in a manner so impudent and daring that the exasperation of the Germans was greatly intensified. Rewards had been offered before and had proved fruitless. On this occasion the governor resolved to sweep aside what he termed trifles, and to use firmly and pitilessly a weapon of ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... her point of view, because she was a pillar of the W. C. T. U., and he frequently took a cocktail before dinner and came back with it on his breath, whereon she would weep over him as one lost to hope. One day, in a mood of brutal exasperation, when he had not had his drink and was able to discern the flavor of her grief, he turned on her: 'I'll tell you what's the matter with you,' ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... a touch of exasperation that he stood there in his tracks, and slowly, methodically, thoroughly, surveyed the four quarters of the lightless room in which he found himself. He scrutinized the heavy, enmuffling gloom with straining eyes, first in one direction and then ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... the gleaming little weapon in his hand for some time without speaking. "Ma petite Diane, your lips are of an adorable redness and your voice is music in my ears, but—I detest questions. They bore me to a point of exasperation," he said at last lightly, and started humming the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... that all of the workingmen were apathetic, or that some did not see through the fraud of the system. They had good reason for the deepest indignation and exasperation. The terrible injustices piled upon them from every quarter—the low wages that they were forced to accept, often in depreciated or worthless banknotes, the continually increasing exactions of the landlords, the high prices squeezed out of them by monopolies, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... danger of a collision between the Committee and the United States authorities which might have arrayed against them the whole military and naval force at that station was surmounted by the exercise of consummate prudence. The most deadly peril of all, the internal dissensions and excessive exasperation in the ranks of the Committee consequent on the dismissal of Judge Terry without punishment was, with prodigious effort, finally averted. And then the determined front of the People thoroughly roused in City and State to their support, awed and finally crushed the force of organized ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... of life universally. Strictly speaking, she was even yet a raw, untutored novice, turned suddenly loose from the twilight of a monastic seclusion. Under any circumstances, such a situation lay open to an amount of danger that was afflicting to contemplate. But one dreadful exasperation of these fatal auguries lay in the peculiar temper of Mrs. Lee, as connected with her infidel thinking. Her nature was too frank and bold to tolerate any disguise; and my mother's own experience had ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... bitch," he roared in exasperation, "lay aloft, damn ye," and at that great sea voice Flora made off and left them, and I am not wondering at it, for surely never was a dog so ordered; but Robin McKinnon was telling me that when he was at the ploughing and McGilp walking with him step for ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... with a slight touch of exasperation in his manner—"who in thunder could have killed Warren if she didn't? ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... abandonment and energy of her attitude, there was the power that belongs to all elemental human emotion, made frankly visible and active. All her plaintive clinging charm had disappeared. It was the fierceness of the dove—the egotism of the weak. Every line and nerve of the fragile form betrayed the exasperation of suffering and a tension of the will, unnatural and irresistible. Lucy bowed to the storm. She lay with her eyes hidden, conscious only of this accusing voice close to her,—and of the song of two nightingales without, rivalling ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... correct, and while I pity him sincerely, the ever-present consciousness of his fatal defect is more distressing—perhaps I should say, annoying—than if he presented some strong physical deformity. He is such a superb and mocking semblance of a man that I cannot even think of him without exasperation." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... accidental with that Machiavelli in petticoats. She knew he would read those accursed lines, and realize with every sentence that in truth she was "letting him down easy." There was no danger of his backing out of his bargain. Seated at the desk, he perused his folly, and grunted with exasperation. Well, after all, what of it? He had coveted a masterpiece; now he was to have two in one—the contemplation of his own blunder, and Mrs. Marteen's criminal genius—cheap at the price. How long had this been going on? Whom had she victimized? And how in the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... reported the numbers of the enemy planes encountered, the types, where seen and when. They spotted batteries, trains in stations back of the enemy lines, gave the hour precisely, reported any activity on the roads. In moments of exasperation Drew would say, "I think they are stringing us! This is all a put-up job!" Certainly this did appear to be the case at first. For we were air-blind. We saw little of the activity all around us, and details on the ground had no significance. ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... appointed him a meeting for the evening in the Abbey of Saint Martin's at Tours, after vesper service; and that in a tone which assured the Burgundian that his master had obtained an advantage hardly to have been hoped for except in such a moment of exasperation. In the meanwhile, Louis, who, though the most politic Prince of his time, upon this, as on other occasions, had suffered his passions to interfere with his prudence, followed contentedly the chase of the wild boar, which was now come to an interesting point. It had ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... that contradicted the manliness of his presence,—an irritation and querulousness that were inconsistent with his size and strength. This fretfulness increased as the moments went by without sign or motion in the faintly lit field beyond, until, in peevish exasperation, he began to kick the ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... think of the madness of the French government and the exasperation of public feeling in a nation like the French, so uniformly proud of military glory, when very shortly after the first arrival of their new monarch, Louis XVIII., an order was issued for leveling with the dust that proud monument of their victories, the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... Loire, and there on the deck, in the presence of the sailors, he reproached in the bitterest manner, those who had abandoned him, and even said offensive things to them. These sallies, the consequence of his exasperation, caused him to be looked upon as out of his mind, and nobody troubled himself about the severe truths which he had thus publicly uttered. The Loire sailed on the 1st of December, and arrived in France on the 27th ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... hound!" Sime's exasperation knew no bounds. For an instant he had believed that Murray was enacting a little side-play in the pursuit of a suddenly conceived plan. But he looked so ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... at her with the frantic and incredulous exasperation of an intolerant man utterly unused to opposition; his face empurpled, his forehead dripping, and his hands ruthlessly pounding the back of the chair; but this straight question stripped him suddenly of gesture and left him standing limp and still ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... Aggravation. — N. aggravation, worsening, heightening; exacerbation; exasperation; overestimation &c. 482; exaggeration &c. 549. V. aggravate, render worse, heighten, embitter, sour; exacerbate; exasperate, envenom; enrage, provoke, tease. add fuel to the fire, add fuel to the flame; fan ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... of which bore heavy interest. He was so ignorant of the first principle of political economy as to lock up the accruing treasure in the Castle of S. Angelo. The rising of Masaniello in Naples was simply due to the exasperation of the common folk at having even fruit and vegetables taxed. In addition to such financial blunders, we must take into account the policy pursued by all princes at this epoch, of discouraging commerce ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... tumbled over one another up stairs and down. All was bustle, uproar, and confusion; yet nothing seemed to advance: while the rage and impetuosity of the Squire continued fermenting to the highest degree of exasperation, which he signified, from time to time, by converting some newly unpacked article, such as a book, a bottle, a ham, or a fiddle, into a missile against the head of some unfortunate servant who did not seem ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... I forget—having founded his upon the handwriting of George Herbert. Dowson and Symons I was to know better in later years when Symons became a very dear friend, and I never got behind John Davidson's Scottish roughness and exasperation, though I saw much of him, but from the first I devoted myself to Lionel Johnson. He and Horne and Image and one or two others shared a man-servant and an old house in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, typical figures ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... liberals of the town classed Madame Graslin among the devotes, the ultras. To the different animosities Veronique had innocently acquired, the virulence of party feeling now added its periodical exasperation. But as this ostracism took nothing really from her, she quietly left society and lived in books which offered her such infinite resources. She meditated on what she read, she compared systems, she widened ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... in the preceding pages leave any impression upon the mind, it is one that must produce a sense of amazement, almost exasperation, at the thought of the many mistakes and disasters that might have been avoided, if only greater weight had been attached to the advice tendered to the British Government by its local representative in South Africa. And with this sense of amazement a generous ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... the teeth out of your head in this God-forsaken country," Captain Caldwell exclaimed, in a tone of exasperation. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... but he severely censured the commandant, who in turn punished his inferiors. The general had said: "One does not go to war in order to amuse one's self and to caress prostitutes." Graf von Farlsberg, in his exasperation, made up his mind to have his revenge on the district, but as he required a pretext for showing severity, he sent for the priest and ordered him to have the bell tolled at the funeral ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... pure, unconscious love of form, inherited from the Greeks, sometimes turned to passion in Ingres: not in "La Source", she is wholly Greek; but in the beautiful sinuous back of the odalisque we perceive some of the exasperation of nerves which betrays our century. If Phidias' sketches had come down to us, the margin filled with his hesitations, we should know more of his intimate personality. You notice, my dear reader, how intolerant I am of criticism of ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... rising to his feet, "I'll leave you to your meditations, and take a look at the bedrooms. Perhaps the explanation of all this will suddenly burst upon you while I am poking about up there. But," concluded Trent in a voice of sudden exasperation, turning round in the doorway, "if you can tell me at any time how under the sun a man who put on all those clothes could forget to put in his teeth, you may kick me from here to the nearest lunatic asylum, and hand me over as an ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... in the middle of the room. She had in her veins the irascible blood of the common people. Then a sense of shame, a mother's modesty, mingled with a vague sentiment of fear and the exasperation of a passionate woman whose love is threatened, and she shuddered, ready to ask for pardon, or ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... both appeared to the senate too harsh and from exasperation well-nigh drove the people to arms: they complained that they were now being attacked with famine, as if they were enemies, that they were being robbed of food and sustenance, that the corn brought from foreign countries, the only support with which fortune ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... directly assail the principle of the private control of capital as the root of the whole social evil. No doubt, what alarmed the capitalists even more than the specific propositions of the social insurgents were the signs of a settled popular exasperation against them and all their works, which indicated that what was now called for was but the beginning of what would be demanded later. The antislavery party had not begun with demanding the abolition of slavery, but merely its limitation. The slaveholders were not, however, deceived as ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy



Words linked to "Exasperation" :   annoying, annoyance, exacerbation, vexation, irritation, exasperate, aggravation, chafe



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