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Accustomed to, or employed in, desperate enterprises; hence, reckless; hopeless. "A perdue captain." Beau. & Fl.

Hence, a desperate hazard or act; a state of being submerged or overwhelmed with difficulties. [R.] She was brought to that plunge, to conceal her husband's murder or accuse her son. Sir P. Sidney. And with thou not reach out a friendly arm, To raise me from amidst this plunge of sorrows Addison.

monly, to incite, as a person, to action by a challenge, by taunts, or by defiance; to exasperate; to irritate; to offend intolerably; to cause to retaliate. Obey his voice, provoke him not. Ex. xxiii. 21. Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. Eph. vi. 4. Such acts Of contumacy will provoke the Highest To mak…

To be furious with anger; to be exasperated to fury; to be violently agitated with passion. "Whereat he inly raged." Milton. When one so great begins to rage, he a hunted Even to falling. Shak.

rce; revolt; insurrection. No sooner is the standard of rebellion displayed than men of desperate principles resort to it. Ames.

; a first step. This boy is forest-born, And hath been tutored in the rudiments of many desperate studies. Shak. There he shall first lay down the rudiments Of his great warfare. Milton.

A boisterous, cruel, brutal fellow; a desperate fellow ready for murderous or cruel deeds; a cutthroat. Wilt thou on thy deathbed play the ruffian Shak.

e reputation of a man depends on the first steps he makes in the world. Pope. Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away. Cowper. I have lately taken steps . . . to relieve the old gentleman's distresses. G. W. Cable.

That which stimulates, provokes, or excites. His feelings had been exasperated by the constant application of stimulants. Macaulay.

For I am in a strait betwixt two. Phil. i. 23. Let no man, who owns a Providence, grow desperate under any calamity or strait whatsoever. South. Ulysses made use of the pretense of natural infirmity to conceal the straits he was in at that time in his thoughts. Broome.

To provoke; to exasperate. [R.] Urge not my father's anger. Shak.

Full of wrath; angry; incensed; much exasperated; wrathful. "Wroth to see his kingdom fail." Milton. Revel and truth as in a low degree, They be full wroth [i. e., at enmity] all day. Chaucer. Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. Gen. iv. 5.