ire
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /aɪɹ/
ipa: /aɪ.ə(ɹ)/
rhymes: -aɪə(ɹ)
Forms: form: ires
form: iring
form: ired
form: ired
Etymology: From Middle English ire, from Old French ire (“ire”), from Latin īra (“wrath, rage”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eysh₂- (“to fall upon, act sharply”) (compare Old English ofost (“haste, zeal”), Old Norse eisa (“to race forward”), Ancient Greek ἱερός (hierós, “supernatural, holy”), οἶστρος (oîstros, “frenzy; gadfly”), Avestan 𐬀𐬈𐬯𐬨𐬀 (aesma, “anger”), Sanskrit इष् f (iṣ, “refreshment, strength”)). Compare also Middle English irre, erre (“anger, wrath”), from Old English yrre, ierre, eorre (“anger, wrath”).
Senses: examples: text: It doesn't tire a man to put down a carpet so much as it ires him.
ref: 1880, Gleason's Monthly Companion, page 287:
text: I heard enough from the gentleman who has just taken his seat, and from my friend, Dr. Caldwell, to ire me just a little bit.
ref: 1915, Dr. Duncan Eve of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, in the Southern Medical Journal, volume 4, page 279
text: “You have enemies. Is that why you have chosen to leave at this time?”
It ired me that he should think so, but I held my peace, and when I spoke at last, my voice was mild.
ref: 1962, Louis L'Amour, Lando, page 3:
text: Only one employee testified as to the interrogation. This was Mary Farley who testified that at the time the research interviewer reached her home she was entertaining company and that she was “ired” by the interruption.
ref: 1968, “H. P. Wasson and Company”, in Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, volume 170, page 298:
text: Mr. Gray (Bonaventure–Îles-de-la-Madeleine): Mr. Speaker, [...] Having been in the House of Commons for seven and one-half years and regardless of political stripe, the thing that angers and ires me the most is to hear downtown metro people talking […]
ref: 1992 03, Canadian House of Commons, House of Commons Debates, volume 7, page 8115:
text: […]to give up anorexia. Everyone else deserves their food; it ires me to no end—couldn't write “pissed off,” too juvenile—to hear other girls say, “I shouldn't be eating this.” Shut up, I want to say, you're fucking gorgeous.
ref: 2001 August 1, Xan Nowakowski, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 104:
text: Instinctively Lear knows she is making some sense, but he has never been treated in this way before and it ires him into calling Goneril a “degenerate bastard” The decrepit old[…]
ref: 2012 September 14, Jim McGahern, A Leg up on the Canon Book 3: Adaptations of Shakespeare's Tragedies and Kyd's the Spanish Tragedy, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 264:
text: The origin of Gates’ decapitation of the Air Force’s top leadership clearly lie with the F-22. Gates was ired that “every time Moseley and Air Force secretary Mike Wynne came to see me, it was about a new bomber or more F-22s.”
ref: 2014 March, John A. Tirpak, “Gates versus the Air Force”, in Air Force Magazine, page 56:
text: ‘And do not leave Furnaux in a pool of blood, however much he ires you. He has his uses.’
ref: 2020, Sarah Hawkswood, River of Sins, Allison and Busby:
glosses: To anger, to irritate.
Derived terms: irable