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provocative
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  • Her manner is open and lightly provocative.   (source)
  • But her sister stared back with sultry eyes, boldly provocative.   (source)
    provocative = tending to stimulate interest or sexual desire
  • The girl tribute from District 1, looking provocative in a see-through gold gown, steps up the center of the stage to join Caesar for her interview.†   (source)
  • "Did you think we wouldn't dare to show up?" the thickset woman asked, her tone trying to be provocative.†   (source)
  • I couldn't help walking around it and reading the provocative stickers.†   (source)
  • The proportions of the place are all off, and not in a provocative way.†   (source)
  • As if realizing the picture might be getting too provocative, Dr. Villalobos turned to the wallscreen.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Lish's Fifth Avenue parties were no less provocative; the seduction and intimidation of young people was an activity both Lishes enjoyed.†   (source)
  • He looked up with a provocative grin, "Hi pal, where's the brass band?†   (source)
  • She knew that even offering to leave now could be provocative.†   (source)
  • He said this in such a taunting and provocative tone I glanced up sharply.†   (source)
  • As a trained researcher, he was astounded that there were so little hard data on so provocative a topic.†   (source)
  • One night a man said to me: "Most of these innocent little girls have no idea how provocative the 'split peach' hairstyle really is!†   (source)
  • His disappearance only makes the mystery more provocative.†   (source)
  • I'd sworn I wouldn't go past the end of the village, but it's a woman's provocative to change her mind.†   (source)
  • And I could see her eyes, even as I shut my own, see that taunting, provocative mouth.†   (source)
  • The purpose of this agreement, as you know, was to prevent acts that might appear to be unduly provocative to one side or the other.†   (source)
  • At the time, the ungrammatical and somehow provocative use of "like" instead of "as" created a minor sensation.†   (source)
  • That night she stopped wearing mourning once and for all, without passing through the useless intermediate stage of blouses with little gray flowers, and her life was filled with love songs and provocative dresses decorated with macaws and spotted butterflies, and she began to share her body with anyone who cared to ask for it.†   (source)
  • Your mouth looks provocative when you do.†   (source)
  • Now I am glad not to be wearing the gaudy, provocative clothing that seems to be drawing stares and whispers to Lil and Em.†   (source)
  • She was this very provocative person, and she was trying to get a rise out of me with all these insults-disguised-as-compliments.†   (source)
  • Doctors' offices depress me even more than hospitals do because of their air of negative expectancy and because of the occasional patient who leaves with good news, shaking the doctor's antiseptic hand and laughing loudly, laughing at everything the doctor says, booming with laughter, with crude power, making a point of ignoring the other patients as he walks past the waiting room still laughing provocatively— he is already clear of them, no longer associated with their weekly gloom, their anxious inferior dying.†   (source)
  • MISS NARWIN: Quite provocative.†   (source)
  • His patients, who were all women, stood in smiling poses—provocative poses, Matron thought—that Charcot had labeled "Crucifixion" and "Beatitude."†   (source)
  • The behavior, or even the mere presence, of this figure adds a stress to the unstable balance of forces that results in a sudden extreme discharge of violence, similar to the explosion that takes place when a percussion cap ignites a charge of dynamite...The hypothesis of unconscious motivation explains why the murderers perceived innocuous and relatively unknown victims as provocative and thereby suitable targets for aggression.†   (source)
  • Provocative topics, all, but he stops.†   (source)
  • She seemed to sense the direction of his thoughts, because he'd caught her staring at him a number of times, a provocative smile playing at the corner of her lips.†   (source)
  • The girls with the provocative poses!†   (source)
  • Excuse me, Ken, but why do you qualify my talk as provocative?†   (source)
  • The Nurture Assumption was in effect an attack on obsessive parenting, a book so provocative that it required two subtitles: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do and Parents Matter Less than You Think and Peers Matter More.†   (source)
  • Hadn't I just told him not to say anything provocative?†   (source)
  • Because if you are—" Felicity pushes open the door and leans provocatively against the frame, playing the coquette.†   (source)
  • How Red Beard had waited, surprised the bride as she came in, then moved Kathy Voskuhl into the provocative position between her husband's legs.†   (source)
  • Putting a woman—a feminist no less—in charge of one of Sweden's most conservative and male-dominated institutions was a provocative and bold idea.†   (source)
  • And finally, I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and stable relations between our two nations.†   (source)
  • Inside all that grief she felt when the doctor died, there had been a bit of pique too, as though he had chosen a more interesting subject than life—a more provocative companion than she was—and had deliberately followed death when it beckoned.†   (source)
  • Her breasts swell provocatively from the V of the gown.†   (source)
  • I wore loose clothes and could not be proven to have behaved provocatively.†   (source)
  • A provocative smile crossed her lips.†   (source)
  • Or, if his uncle's brace is such a provocative subject, shouldn't he have selected it in the first place as his subject—not the farm?†   (source)
  • In joining the chorus against Webster's Third, John Simon had not just entered the raging "dictionary wars," but had thrown down a most provocative and elitist gauntlet.†   (source)
  • Her efforts to conceal herself were oddly provocative, far more so than if she'd simply gone about the business naked.†   (source)
  • That's a provocative statement.†   (source)
  • The hope was that these programs would be provocative, stimulating, and helpful to listeners.†   (source)
  • With liberation soclose, it would be madness to cut that thread by indulging in reckless and provocative activities.†   (source)
  • She wasn't sure provocative was a compliment but good story was.†   (source)
  • Perhaps I should be deliberately provocative, perhaps I should confirm their deepest suspicions.†   (source)
  • Outside, a young reporter and her cameraman were waiting on the sidewalk, ready to capture a provocative scene, but all they got were pictures of the workers exiting the district office carrying John-inscribed pennants and bumper stickers, oven mitts and disposable lighters.†   (source)
  • Plato's Socrates provocatively tells his jury that he is a hero.†   (source)
  • She spent a lot of her time making unnecessary journeys into the town where, with her good looks and provocative body, she could be sure of admiration, and more, from the young men.†   (source)
  • Heaven forbid your master ever do anything provocative, Alain.†   (source)
  • She felt unashamedly provocative, conscious of her backside swaying amid the folds of her transparent skirt, attracting the eyes of the bathers umbrella-shrouded along the beach.†   (source)
  • The stories were connected most provocatively of all to me, perhaps, through the entry into my story-telling mind of another sort of tie—a shadowing of Greek mythological figures, gods and heroes that wander in various guises, at various times, in and out, emblems of the characters' heady dreams.†   (source)
  • The army was seldom more provocative than that.†   (source)
  • The partisan leader, or, to be more exact, the commander of the Kezhemsk group of the trans-Ural partisan units, sat in a provocatively nonchalant attitude under the speaker's very nose; he kept interrupting him rudely and disrespectfully.†   (source)
  • EDMUND Grins at his father provocatively.†   (source)
  • Seventh and finally: I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations.†   (source)
  • Doubletree Mutt looked into the barn, his big tail waving provocatively, and Jody was so incensed at his health that he found a hard black clod on the floor and deliberately threw it.   (source)
    provocatively = in a manner that provokes
  • like provocative music   (source)
    provocative = stimulating or exciting
  • When they were alone she had asked her why she so provocatively refused to talk to the police.†   (source)
  • The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries.†   (source)
  • Lady Merryweather, the Myrish beauty with the black hair and the big dark eyes, spun so provocatively that every man in the hall was soon watching her.†   (source)
  • Like for so many inner-city blacks who left mainstream churches for Pentecostal congregations in the 1970s and 1980s (making it the fastest-growing denomination in the country), Scripture Cathedral offered Cedric and Barbara neat designations of good and evil and strict rules forbidding even common activities, like watching movies or dressing provocatively.†   (source)
  • But instead of spurning it, she proudly, provocatively played it for all it was worth, as if submitting of her own will to public rape; and suddenly, unable to wait any longer, she pulled Tomas down to the floor.†   (source)
  • The guitarist reached the curb and in entering the traffic-really, he was quite provocatively slow, moving through this city street-he almost walked beneath the wheels of an automobile.†   (source)
  • He grins at his father provocatively.†   (source)
  • EDMUND Grins provocatively.†   (source)
  • EDMUND Provocatively.†   (source)
  • Do you find this"—he strikes a ridiculously provocative pose—"distracting?"†   (source)
  • I'll never convince anyone of anything if I'm trying to be provocative.†   (source)
  • Don't you see how deliberately provocative this is?†   (source)
  • And I could see her eyes, even as I shut my own, see that taunting, provocative mouth.†   (source)
  • Her mouth curved into a provocative smile.†   (source)
  • In his last exam for me he wrote a very foolish, really provocative, answer.†   (source)
  • She viewed any attempt to control her life as provocative and possibly hostile.†   (source)
  • It's a provocative thought, but it doesn't wash.†   (source)
  • Did you really think he would attend a conference with so provocative a title?†   (source)
  • Mrs. Wallace, the adviser to the paper, called it 'provocative.†   (source)
  • It was neither provocative nor flirtatious, simply interrogative.†   (source)
  • Zayd gets no answer and writes a provocative note: "CCame by, heard music inside.†   (source)
  • And just to be provocative, I dropped some remark about the number of the President's photographs.†   (source)
  • Around that time a merry, foul-mouthed, provocative woman came to the house to help with the chorea, and she knew how to read the future in cards.†   (source)
  • She had been brought up around plenty of cursing, and knew every word and provocative construction, but since she'd become a mother, since she'd converted, she hadn't sworn more than once or twice.†   (source)
  • Active, small, and indomitable like Ursula, and almost as pretty and provocative as Remedios the Beauty, she was endowed with a rare instinct for anticipating fashion.†   (source)
  • He was zealous, jumpy, provocative.†   (source)
  • Politicians would sometimes say provocative things—such as that his exoneration just proved the system works—which irritated and angered me.†   (source)
  • To stay awake and alert, the captain, a Greek man of middle age, liked to take up provocative subjects.†   (source)
  • The startling thing about her simplifying instinct was that the more she did away with fashion in a search for comfort and the more she passed over conventions as she obeyed spontaneity, the more disturbing her incredible beauty became and the more provocative she became to men.†   (source)
  • Myers claimed to be terrified of McMillian; one of the officers suggested to Myers that McMillian might have sexually assaulted him; the idea was so provocative and inflammatory that Myers immediately recognized its usefulness and somberly acknowledged that it was true.†   (source)
  • Why was she so provocative?†   (source)
  • KIM PHUC is best known as "the girl in the picture," the provocative photo of a Vietnam War napalm attack.†   (source)
  • They seemed provocative somehow.†   (source)
  • Her eccentricities were no longer provocative and the stupefying ease with which he had gotten and stayed between her legs had changed from the great good fortune he'd considered it, to annoyance at her refusal to make him hustle for it, work for it, do something difficult for it.†   (source)
  • "Thank you, Paul, for that provocative talk," said the moderator, a tb specialist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, a friend of Farmer's named Ken Castro.†   (source)
  • Elaine Risley, looking anything but formidable in a powder-blue jogging suit that's seen better days, nevertheless can come out with a few pungent and deliberately provocative comments on women today.†   (source)
  • In one of the most provocative statements in Paradigms Lost, Simon presented an unapologetic defense of elitism: Language, I think, belongs to two groups only: gifted individuals everywhere, who use it imaginatively; and the fellowship of men and women, wherever they are, who, without being particularly inventive, nevertheless endeavor to speak and write correctly.†   (source)
  • My belief in chance lets me see life as brimming with possibility: the person next to me in line at the airport who becomes a lifelong friend, the professor in the elevator who asks a provocative question, or the soldier I meet at an outdoor cafe in Jerusalem who takes me on a romantic tour of the city, leaving me with an indelible memory.†   (source)
  • And last night's affair seemed to overlay the landscape as Matty drove west on Interstate 10 through a town called Deming, which was Eric's last name of course, and how clammy was the hand of coincidence—faces, places and provocative remarks all running through his mind.†   (source)
  • George showed up in the Health Room, and Sukeena immediately began dancing in a most fluid, provocative and suggestive manner.†   (source)
  • MISS NARWIN: Deliberately provocative.†   (source)
  • We need more provocative thinkers.†   (source)
  • A lure so provocative it will drive him into a frenzy until he has it in his possession-has me in his grip so he can question me.†   (source)
  • I found her timidity provocative.†   (source)
  • The rest of the article was based on a deliberately provocative piece Wu had written six years earlier for a feminist fanzine.†   (source)
  • Terrific, it's a very provocative issue," says Tom, who mentions some studies that are already underway on the issue.†   (source)
  • Provocative!†   (source)
  • One day, a boy of about sixteen perched himself on a bar stool and dropped a few provocative phrases that stood out in the general conversation like a false line in a drawing, a line that can be neither continued nor erased.†   (source)
  • t of imagination, Dear Diary, I should tell you that Sukeena's full black form when clothed loosely in white Egyptian cotton is so provocative that my husband banned her from this dress early on in her service.†   (source)
  • He understands full well this power he has over me, uses it playfully, but on this occasion-and there have been others, truth be told-it was not so much playful as provocative, and he made no effort to disguise or conceal his lust.†   (source)
  • Provocative.†   (source)
  • Bishop Long said you should look as good as you are able-without being provocative or flashy-because this, after all, is a house of God.†   (source)
  • After a few minutes and a second ginger ale, though, he realizes that nothing untoward is bound to happen, that, instead, he feels loose and sort of relaxed here with the always provocative Molly.†   (source)
  • Everyone returns to the deepening groove of identity designation for another hour, with the discussion moving from whether it's fitting to be "really proud of something you never had a hand in, just the way you were born" (that from the provocative Los Angeleno, Ira Volker) to why no one mentions Caucasian as an identity.†   (source)
  • There was nothing provocative about this woman—except that she was an incitement to riot just by existing.†   (source)
  • PLAYER: Lucianus, nephew to the king ...usurped by his uncle and shattered by his mother's incestuous marriage ...loses his reason ...throwing the court into turmoil and disarray as he alternates between bitter melancholy and unrestricted lunacy ...staggering from the suicidal (a pose) to the homicidal (here he kills "POLONIUS") ...he at last confronts his mother and in a scene of provocative ambiguity-(a somewhat oedipal embrace) begs her to repent and recant (He springs up, still talking.)†   (source)
  • Her absence, after the most complete (or perhaps I should say only) propinquity of flesh in my life, was spooky, almost palpable, and I drowsily realized it had partly to do with the smell of her, which remained like a vapor in the air: a musky genital odor, still provocative, still lascivious.†   (source)
  • But this secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles—in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy—this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside of Soviet soil—is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country, if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe.†   (source)
  • Her provocative posture, her smile—they became part of the mood of the song, too much to contemplate.†   (source)
  • Not only did she have no trace of French accent but also—well, French women are at least slightly provocative at all times; they can't help it, it's ingrained in the French culture.†   (source)
  • I pretended nonchalance even though her presence still stirred me to the very pit of my stomach, inflamed me in a way that was all the more distracting because of the perfume she was wearing—the same herbal scent, distinctly unsubtle and loamy and provocative, which had stung my libidinal longings on that first day when we went to Coney Island.†   (source)
  • I knew that Star enjoyed jeweled costumes; I knew she liked them naughty—not in the sense of crowding the taboos, there weren't any—but provocative, gilding the lily, accentuating what hardly needs it.†   (source)
  • But, without being provocative, she had that rare gift for immediate intimacy; she spoke to me as a very old friend might speak, friends who knew each other's smallest foibles and were utterly easy tete-a-tete.†   (source)
  • Her sister shook down several strands of coarse red hair before a provocatively wrinkled nose.†   (source)
  • Now and then one or other party would shout provocatively over the shoulder, but it is hard to come into serious conflict back to back, and the affair ended with their giving each other tall glasses of lager beer.†   (source)
  • Her round soft face, which had been voluptuous and inviting a few months ago, had already put on the barrier of pregnancy, the self-sufficient smile, the knowing perfection-look; and her plump body—full soft breasts and stomach, hard hips and buttocks that had swung so freely and provocatively as to invite slapping and stroking—her whole body had become demure and serious.†   (source)
  • Knowing his desire, she turned her head quickly but smiled provocatively at him out of the corners of her eyes.†   (source)
  • "No-o!" provocatively.†   (source)
  • The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh seemed to say: "Yes, there's nothing left for you and me but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy."†   (source)
  • This with a provocative glance and a gleam of teeth.†   (source)
  • "Poor Mrs. Schearl!" she said with grating, provocative pity.†   (source)
  • I saw for the first time in my life how beautiful she was, and how beautiful and dreamlike the play of the wind in her delicate hair, how beautiful and provocative the fall of her thin blue dress over her young limbs; and just as the bitter spice of the chewed bud coursed through me with the whole dread pleasure and pain of spring, so the sight of the girl filled me with the whole deadly foreboding of love, the foreboding of woman.†   (source)
  • (more and more with a deliberate, provocative taunting) I notice you didn't deny it when I asked you about the iceman†   (source)
  • It was so nice to know that she looked pretty and provocative, and she impulsively bent forward and kissed her reflection in the mirror and then laughed at her own foolishness.†   (source)
  • They were animated by a strange and provocative influence.†   (source)
  • She was before him, provocative, enduring.†   (source)
  • Indeed, all the enjoyments of this period were provocative of tears.†   (source)
  • "That peasant's beard's frozen," Kolya cried in a loud provocative voice as he passed him.†   (source)
  • The sound was provocative of thought.†   (source)
  • There was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing.†   (source)
  • Aziz was provocative.†   (source)
  • He had presented a variety of moods to Duane's observation, and this latest one was provocative of thought.†   (source)
  • She was to him extraordinarily provocative, because of the knowledge she seemed to possess, and gathered fruit of experience he could not attain.†   (source)
  • Here the night and place were lonely, sad, provocative of such thoughts as had never before disturbed Tom.†   (source)
  • Her manner, as Clyde could see, while much less suggestive of masked bravado was yielding and to him designedly so, as well as naturally provocative.†   (source)
  • And like a happy child, wanting the completion as soon as possible, and knowing vaguely that Dick had planned for her to have it, she lay on her bed as soon as she got home and wrote Tommy Barban in Nice a short provocative letter.†   (source)
  • And all manner of actions, from which, until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as spying, to-night, outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants, listening at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation of old monuments, that was to say, so many different methods of scientific investigation, each one having a definite intellectual value and being legitimately employable in the search for truth.†   (source)
  • And in spite of himself, his eye once more followed nervously and yet unwaveringly to the last word all the suggestive and provocative details.†   (source)
  • The next day Danglars was again hungry; certainly the air of that dungeon was very provocative of appetite.†   (source)
  • Besides that, he was beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.†   (source)
  • But the deep regular breathing, still going on while the other was taking off his worn shoes and gaiters, and still continuing when he had laid aside his coat and cravat, became at length a strong provocative to curiosity, and incentive to get a glimpse of the sleeper's face.†   (source)
  • But now she quite gave up all effort, now it was a grin, a broad grin; there was something shameless, provocative in that quite unchildish face; it was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the shameless face of a French harlot.†   (source)
  • In the humorous line, I am thought to have a very pretty way with me; and as for pathos, I am as provocative of tears as an onion.†   (source)
  • The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.†   (source)
  • That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man.†   (source)
  • He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.†   (source)
  • They carried alforjas all of them, and all apparently well filled, at least with things provocative of thirst, such as would summon it from two leagues off.†   (source)
  • I was at first at a great loss for salt, but custom soon reconciled me to the want of it; and I am confident that the frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced only as a provocative to drink, except where it is necessary for preserving flesh in long voyages, or in places remote from great markets; for we observe no animal to be fond of it but man, and as to myself, when I left this country, it was a great while before I could endure the taste of it in anything that I ate.†   (source)
  • If your worship would like a drop, sound though warm, I have a gourd here full of the best, and some scraps of Tronchon cheese that will serve as a provocative and wakener of your thirst if so be it is asleep.†   (source)
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