irritative

[ir-i-tey-tiv]

adjective

1. serving or tending to irritate.

2. Pathology.,  characterized or produced by irritation of some body part.

   an irritative fever.

Other Word Forms

• irritativeness noun
• unirritative adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of irritative¹

First recorded in 1680–90; irritate + -ive

Example Sentences

The Ancash State regional health office said 140 people were treated for “irritative symptoms caused by the inhalation of toxins” after a pipeline carrying the concentrate under high pressure burst open in their community.

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It is of course diagnosticated without difficulty from the sporadic catarrhal fevers, which lack the characteristic depression, neuralgic and rheumatoid pains, the irritative cough, dyspnoea, and so on.

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It seems probable that the heart condition was acquired as a consequence of some irritative lesion affecting the inhibitory nerves to the heart that developed at that time.

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That an irritative lesion in the line of the centripetal tracts can influence cortical life is shown by thalamus lesions in which hallucinations are sometimes present.

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To this satisfactory result must be added the irritative effect on enemy morale of the knowledge that whenever the weather was fine our machines hummed overhead, ready to molest and be molested.

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