5 uses
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Definition
to stir up or shake — emotionally (as when people are angered or upset) or physically (as when a washing machine cleans clothes)
- He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament.Chapter 10 — The Leech and his Patient (44% in)
- At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament was thrown into agitation.Chapter 8 — The Elf-child and the Minister (61% in)
- And Pearl, stepping in mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.Chapter 14 — Hester and the Physician (8% in)
- Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them: always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Hester's brow.Chapter 21 — The New England Holiday (22% in)
- Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be borne upward like a floating sea-bird on the long heaves and swells of sound.Chapter 22 — The Procession (5% in)
There are no more uses of "agitate" in The Scarlet Letter.
Typical Usage
(best examples)