noun.
The act of teasing, or the state of being teased.
noun.
One who or that which teases; a plague.
To pull apart or separate the adhering fibers of, as a bit of tissue or a specimen for microscopical examination; pick or tear into its sepa rate fibers; comb or card, as wool or flax.
To dress, as cloth, by means of teazels.
To vex, annoy, disturb, or irritate by petty requests, by silly trifling, or by jests and raillery; plague with questions, importunity, insinuations, raillery, or the like.
Synonyms Tease, Vex, Annoy, Molest, Badger, Pester, Bother, Worry, Plague, Torment. All these words either may or must refer to repeated acts; they all suggest mental pain, but of degrees varying with the word or with the circumstances; all except badger and molest may be used reflexively, but with different degrees of appropriateness, vex, worry, and torment being the most common in such use; the agent may be a person, or, except with badger, it may be a creature, events, circumstances, etc.; it would be clearly figurative to use tease when the agent is not a person; all except tease are always used seriously. Tease is not a strong word, but has considerable breadth of use: a child may tease his mother for what he desires; there is a great deal of good-humored teasing of friends about their matrimonial intentions; a fly may tease a dog by continually waking him up. Vex is stronger, literally implying anger and figuratively applying to repeated attacks, etc., such as would produce an excitement as strong as anger. In Shakspere's “still-vex'd Bermoothes” (Tempest, i. 2. 229), the use of vex is somewhat poetic or archaic, as is the application of the word to the continued agitation of the sea. Annoy has a middle degree of strength between tease and vex; a feeling of annoyance is somewhat short of vexation. We may be annoyed by the persistence of flies, beggars, duns, suitors, picket-firing, etc. Molest is generally a stronger word in its expression of harm done or intended, including the sense of disturbing once or often: some wild animals will not molest those who do not molest them. The next four words have a homely force—badger being founded upon the baiting of a badger by dogs, and thus implying persistence, energy, and some rudeness; pester implying similar persistence and much small vexation; bother implying weariness and perhaps confusion of the mind; and worry implying actual fatigue and even exhaustion. Plague and torment are very strong by the figurative extension of their primary meaning, although they are often used by hyperbole for that which is intolerable only by constant return: as, a tormenting fly. See exasperate and harass.