vexation

Holly is already known to police because she’s in the habit of sneaking into the house where she grew up and sleeping there overnight, to the vexation of the current owners.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026

"You might be feeling a familiar vexation at the sight of these two formerly innocuous numerals," Dictionary.com said, addressing parents as it announced the winner this week.

From Barron's ● Oct. 30, 2025

Strange, too, that so few books deal substantively with a near-universal vexation, by which I mean the tax system.

From New York Times ● Apr. 13, 2024

Even if you don’t care about bowling, his vexation is understandable.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 21, 2023

As she went across the hallway she gave out a cry of sheer vexation which was amplified by the raw acoustic of the bare floor tiles.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan

Ahead of Sunday’s election for a new parliament and government, those vexations are being heard again as the European Union country’s two main parties, the center-left Socialists and the center-right Social Democrats, compete for power.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 27, 2022

By now, the litany of vexations is well known: the jammed phone lines, the hours on hold, the online system that balks and crashes, the inexplicable responses to re-file and then re-file again.

From Washington Times ● Jun. 17, 2020

The homeowner’s breathing more easily now; she’ll suffer no further vexations.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 28, 2016

Wendy Eager, who edited a fanzine called Guillotine, tells Rettman that she found the new scene less hospitable than the old one, which, for all its vexations, had felt like home to her.

From The New Yorker ● Mar. 2, 2015

The passage in which he refers to the vexations to which he had been subjected is worth quoting, on account of its similarity to our Sir Thomas's story.

From Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight by John Willcock