How to Use provocation in a Sentence

provocation

noun

• With hardly any provocation, the crowd began to chant.
• He can turn violent at the least provocation.
• Her calmness in the face of repeated provocations impressed her friends.
• That great unknown alone makes the provocation worth the hype.
  — Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2023
• And provocation includes things that make the pain worse.
  — Jenny Sweigard, Verywell Health, 5 Mar. 2024
• There was provocation on the part of both Bradley and Allissa.
  — Emily Palmer, Peoplemag, 13 Sep. 2023
• And so the provocations and groans continue, for two hours and 40 minutes that could have been half or twice as long.
  — Jesse Green, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2024
• Some of Tibi’s florals and swirls drew the eye downward, a quiet provocation.
  — Miami Staff, Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024
• But there is more than prurience or even provocation at work here.
  — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 1 Sep. 2023
• Then horror struck, when a man pulled a gun on them without provocation and shots rang out.
  — Marlene Lenthang, NBC News, 30 Nov. 2023
• Very awkward message to project to a crowd of moviegoers, but it is meant to be a provocation.
  — Jennifer Wilson, The New Republic, 27 Dec. 2022
• Berlin fears that Moscow will view the presence of German tanks as a provocation and wants the US to send its tanks to give it cover.
  — Frida Ghitis, CNN, 22 Jan. 2023
• But for now, it’s best viewed as a provocation or an advertising blitz.
  — Matteo Wong, The Atlantic, 16 Feb. 2024
• But what happened — what’s been happening — is that his words and actions float on the veneer of provocation.
  — Damon Young, Washington Post, 17 Oct. 2022
• Soon after, two people came in and used force to take the dog from her, seemingly without provocation.
  — Jeremy Childs, Los Angeles Times, 28 Sep. 2023
• Others fear it would be seen as a provocation that could spiral into an even wider conflict.
  — Chris Megerian, Lorne Cook and Seung Min Kim, Anchorage Daily News, 9 July 2023
• The cover shows Jagger, dead-center in frame, with his mouth agape, a classic Teller provocation.
  — Jacob Gallagher, WSJ, 8 Dec. 2023
• Putting Rand in the title of one’s satirical novel feels like a dare, or at least — in a hyper-polarized time — a provocation.
  — Ryan Chapman, Los Angeles Times, 14 Nov. 2023
• There is no doubt that Pyongyang is ramping up its rhetoric and its military provocations.
  — Sue Mi Terry, Foreign Affairs, 30 Jan. 2024
• What leads a group of teenagers to attack another without any provocation?
  — Christopher Lopez, Fox News, 13 Feb. 2023
• Still, the move was seen as a deliberate provocation—one that risks upending the delicate status quo in one of the most volatile holy sites in the Middle East.
  — Yasmeen Serhan, Time, 4 Jan. 2023
• Making people clutch their pearls over the direct provocation?
  — Zoe Guy, Vulture, 22 Sep. 2023
• Fed up, Father Theophilus and his fellow monks decided to return the provocation.
  — Hiba Yazbek, New York Times, 15 Apr. 2023
• The title of the first full-length boygenius album, like many aspects of the band’s fledgling lore, is a playful little in-joke that functions as both a wink and a provocation.
  — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2023
• No twist in the play — a kind of sketch comedy/video game sendup gone overboard — is meant to be taken as anything but outrageous provocation.
  — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 9 June 2023
• Those characters tend to be more sensitive, crying jets of tears at the slightest provocation.
  — Peter Debruge, Variety, 27 May 2023
• The world would have stopped as generals and the president held press conferences about the apparent provocation.
  — Kenneth Rapoza, Forbes, 10 Feb. 2023
• And both sides have been warning that the other is preparing a nuclear provocation at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
  — IEEE Spectrum, 7 July 2023
• Kim is known for his provocations and has signaled in recent years a coming policy shift on South Korea.
  — Simone McCarthy, CNN, 15 Feb. 2024
• According to the victim, Hynes would go into a violent rage at the tiniest provocations.
  — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 18 Feb. 2023

Last Updated: 3 May 2024