unprovoke

English

Etymology

un- +‎ provoke

Verb

unprovoke (third-person singular simple present unprovokes, present participle unprovoking, simple past and past participle unprovoked)

1. To undo or counter a provocation.
   • 1606, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth:

     Lechery, sir, it provokes and it unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery

   • 1987, William Safire, Freedom, page 758:

     Then we'll just have to unprovoke him.

   • 1988, MacDonald Harris, The Cathay Stories and Other Fictions, page 90:

     Just as we in the West say that wine provokes the desire and unprovokes the performance, so in Cipangu they say that Oleander-tea unprovokes the desire but provokes the performance.

   • 2004, Adele Jinadu, Olatunde Oloko, Crisis of Democratization, Development and Electoral Violence in Nigeria:

     Furthermore, I consider political information as catalyst for informatic dialectics; a tranquilizer and of course, an equivocator which can provoke and unprovoke

   • 2005, Joseph Rosenblum, The Greenwood companion to Shakespeare, →ISBN, page 177:

     The equivocating Pandulph provokes and unprovokes, damns and absolves, uncrowns and crowns almost from scene to scene.

   • 2009, Ian McAdam, Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama, page 293:

     Volpone, in a desperate attempt to undo his own overreaching, to "unprovoke" his lawyer Voltore — "When I provoked him, then I lost myself" [5.11.22] — must falsify the brief and uncharacteristically true pleading of Voltore on the grounds he is possessed: