torment

in a sentence

If we don't want him tormenting us with algebra or Irish grammar all we have to do is ask him a question about America and that gets him so excited he might go on for the whole day.  (source) Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes, 1996

From that day on I stopped tormenting Buffo,  (source) Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed, 2003

For months she'd been tormented by the thought that Pedro had lied to her on his wedding day, that he'd told her he loved her just so she wouldn't suffer, or that as time went on, he really had grown to love Rosaura.  (source) Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate, 1992

This was Franek's chance to torment my father and to thrash him savagely every day.  (source) Elie Wiesel, Night, 1960

He spent the night awake, tormented by the pain of his sores.  (source) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967

MERCUTIO: Ah, that cold-hearted Rosaline Torments him so that he will surely go mad.  (source) William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet -- adapted, 2003

Flattering me into tormenting them because he ... loved viciousness.  (source) John Gardner, Grendel, 1971

In front of it were two yellow buses, our own tormentor and one that brought students from the other direction, and loitering students awaiting the knell of the morning bell.†  (source) Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, 1976

As the boys spread out in anticipation, I saw Arthur H.—one of his biggest tormentors—a few yards behind Tommy's back, begin mimicking him, doing a daft version of the way Tommy was standing over the ball, hands on hips.†  (source) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, 2005

Sir, said the philosopher, the dragon that thou dreamedst of betokeneth thine own person that sailest here, and the colours of his wings be thy realms that thou hast won, and his tail which is all to-tattered signifieth the noble knights of the Round Table; and the boar that the dragon slew coming from the clouds betokeneth some tyrant that tormenteth the people, or else thou art like to fight with some giant thyself, being horrible and abominable, whose peer ye saw never in your days, wherefore of this dreadful dream doubt thee nothing, but as a conqueror come forth thyself.†  (source) Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, 1485

EDMUND Tormentedly.†  (source) Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night, 1955

Her hat was the breast and wing of a red bird tormentingly pierced by two hatpins.†  (source) Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1943

Busy with the ache of their own growing pains, his brothers and sisters had little time for him: he was almost six years younger than Luke, the youngest of them, but they exerted over him the occasional small cruelties, petty tormentings by elder children of a younger, interested and excited by the brief screaming insanity of his temper when, goaded and taunted from some deep dream, he would seize a carving knife and pursue them, or batter his head against the walls.†  (source) Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, 1929