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irk

/ərk/
/ək/
IPA guide

Other forms: irked; irks; irking

The verb irk means "annoy," so if the incessant barking of your next door neighbor's pug is driving you crazy, you can say that the noise irks you.

Being irked is an individual thing — what drives you crazy might be something your friend doesn't even notice. For example, it might irk your grammarian friend every time he hears someone says "ain't," but other people don't mind it. The earliest version of the word irk, irken, meant "to feel weary or tired," but it later came to mean "to tire of or to be disgusted with."

Definitions of irk
  1. verb
    irritate or vex
    synonyms: gall
    see moresee less
    type of:
    anger
    make angry
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