agitated

adjective

ag·​i·​tat·​ed ˈa-jə-ˌtā-təd 

: troubled in mind : disturbed and upset

When Caswall asked him to describe what he had seen …, he got very agitated …

—Bram Stoker

was so agitated she could hardly speak

agitatedly adverb

pacing back and forth agitatedly

Synonyms of agitated

• excited
• heated
• upset

Examples of agitated in a Sentence

all ferry crossings were cancelled because of the agitated waters around the islands

by the time they finally showed up, long after midnight, we'd become so agitated that we never did get to sleep that night

Recent Examples on the Web

On a tech podcast released last weekend, Altman appeared to grow agitated when host Brad Gerstner asked how OpenAI would fund the commitments given current revenues. —Steve Kopack, NBC news, 6 Nov. 2025

Lairmore, one of only two witnesses called, testified that officers perceived a potential threat from an agitated Dunn. —Andrew Goudsward, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025

Locked away in an old house in Montana, her increasingly agitated and erratic behavior leaves her companion, Jackson, played by Pattinson, worried and helpless. —Karla Rodriguez, Footwear News, 3 Nov. 2025

In this effective, no-nonsense chiller, a couple – one with an escalating form of parasomnia (a sleep disturbance that leads to fugue-like sleep walking) – seek and don’t get some R&R together and wind up arguing more and getting more agitated as freaky things start to happen. —Randy Myers, Mercury News, 24 Oct. 2025

Word History

Etymology

from past participle of agitate

First Known Use

1684, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for agitated

• abdicated
• abrogated
• acclimated
• activated
• actuated
• adumbrated
• advocated
• aggravated
• aggregated
• allocated
• alternated
• amputated