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Use goad in a sentence

Definition of goad:

  • (noun) a pointed instrument that is used to prod into a state of motion
  • (noun) a verbalization that encourages you to attempt something;
  • (verb) give heart or courage to
  • (verb) urge with or as if with a goad
  • (verb) stab or urge on as if with a pointed stick
  • (verb) goad or provoke,as by constant criticism; "He needled her with his sarcastic remarks"

Sentence Examples:

Had they perceived an apparition shaking a bloody goad, they could not have acted with more concerted or devastating rapidity.

They were goaded to exasperation by the infamous acts of that clique, and they were careless of what consequences might follow.

Friends taunted and ridiculed him until, goaded to indignation, he cried: "I have better books in me than you have ever read."

To make it so, they seem determined to goad them to desperation, in order to have an excuse to turn upon and annihilate them.

The middle-aged spouse is goaded to madness at being deprived of those favors which the more comely wife is allowed to share.

His inordinate ambition goaded him on to the attainment of power; and power when possessed served only to augment his ambition.

"I took care of you," screamed Flutter-Duck, goaded beyond endurance by the thought that her neighbors were witnessing this filial disrespect.

The skipper peered at them with eager expectation, as though he hoped his remarks would goad them into losing their tempers.

Jimmy, not relishing in the least this attempt to goad the millionaire, remained silent, but no words from him were needed.

It goaded their souls to see the young officers from the two opposing armies salute each other courteously, and interchange cigars.

Goaded to desperation by his villainous servant, Herbert Murray turned upon the traitor and hurled him down the gravel pit.

They were dark flashing eyes, and their smile seemed to me perpetually to challenge, to allure and repulse, and even to goad.

Drawled in the solemn bass of amazed indignation that his mother's voice assumed when goaded into speech by his father's sallies.

One thought hammering at his brain goaded him to superhuman exertion: "Those devils shall not murder Harry before I reach him."

His hands were clenched; yet still he wore that half-frightened look as of an animal that will spring when goaded, not before.

Disturbance at home immediately succeeds to peace abroad: the commons were goaded by the tribunes with the excitement of the agrarian law.

He goaded us nearly to madness with his criticisms of our inefficiency, and he mocked repeatedly the groom's ill-timed cry of Liberty.

Goaded by her southern superstition, she prepared to struggle with fate as one struggles with somebody who is endeavoring to strangle one.

Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former benefits to goad and irritate him: these are always a cause of hostility aggravated.

When she opened them again they were among trees and fields, while the goaded machine hurled itself forward in tugging leaps.

The Nips enjoyed prodding and goading us especially in front of the Filipinos to show the superiority of the yellow race.

Let dogs delight, if they want to; I refuse to be goaded by your querulous nature into giving anything but the soft answer.

Like the stag, whose brow is beat with wings of hawks, perched in his heavenward antlers; so I, blinded, goaded, headlong, rush!

The Secretary chose to leave it thus, rather than blow it apart, to further anger the Soviets and goad them into reprisals.

The champions of religious liberty became as bigoted and intolerant as those whose intolerance and bigotry had first goaded them into rebellion.

I remember, one day in particular, when he was so exceedingly irritating to me, that he goaded me on into addressing him quite rudely.

It sometimes happened that these imperious gentry reaped the reward of their own lawlessness and goaded their oppressed tenants to active rebellion.

He was quite contented; why should he be goaded forth to fight with windmills which he no longer believed to be knights in armor?

Ask me no more, for if I told you more, your contempt would goad me to a self-defense that would be still more contemptible.

My friend, not considering that the unfortunate man was probably goaded beyond endurance, smote the schoolmaster and blackened his eye.

"You can taunt me if you like," cried Dick, goaded to fury, and the whole bitterness of a lifetime surging up in passionate speech.

It is an inexorable creditor that has goaded many a boy to stealing; for cigarettes cost money, and they do not encourage industry.

Her moral warmth was ready and waiting for the instigating subject, but of course she was unconscious of the goad within.

The leader had got the bit between her teeth, and, when descending a hill-side, the splinter-bar goaded the wheeler to madness.

"I should hate to do it," replied Shirley, "but I think I could do it, if goaded by certain exigencies which I can imagine."

A vague unrest pursues her still, torturing her by insinuations of her own utter futility, yet goading her on to fresh efforts.

Eating her heart in solitude, she might have been goaded in time to fly the empty world, and seek the consolation of a cloister.

Bad men are among them, who have often imposed upon their ignorance or inflamed their passions, goading them to violence and crime.

They were also oppressed by burdensome taxes, and finally, goaded on by their unhappy condition, they rose in arms against their tyrants.

Boswell's was a pride which was constantly giving him pain and was capable, when goaded to obstinacy, of going to considerable lengths.

If both Emperor and marshal knew this, why did they yield to the pitiless voices that goaded them on in their indecision?

Consciousness, goaded by an insatiable desire to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality, or perceives the reality only through the symbol.

This natural conscientiousness, independent of spirituals, has been like a goad in my side all my life, and its demands, I think, heighten.

Human depravity, goaded on by every motive which spiritual wickedness could suggest, celebrated such a carnival as must have staggered even a Nero.

He was wondering whether Theo's determination to shield his wife would possibly goad him into a direct lie; and he devoutly hoped not.

Goaded by the instinct of self-preservation, man, like all other living things, has made heroic efforts to meet the demands of his environment.

He believed nothing of the sort, but his arms were growing desperately weary, and he must goad the drunken gunman into immediate action.

It was to be a war of class against class, in which both parties were artistically goaded by dark suspicions and deftly-spread falsehoods.

Then some goaded me with pointed sticks; some burned me with firebrands or red-hot stones, while others used burning ashes or hot coals.

By remorseless energy, by ceaseless harping on the subject, had this stringent mother goaded six daughters into matrimony against tremendous odds.

Our sympathies are skillfully enlisted on the side of the insurgents, who are goaded to their desperate enterprise by insufferable wrongs and cruelties.

No doubt there have been a few splendid spurts, which we may, if we please, trace to the genial goading of the Invisible King.

It converted some of those who have since become the most feared of militant propagandists, and goaded certain of the previously converted into action.

Overpowered by the terrors of "war that was real war", Schwab was goaded into feverish activity by the news of the withdrawal.

Susannah, goaded into direct speech by what seemed to her his willful slowness, answered with the blood still hotter in her cheeks.

Richards company in front, and goading that exclusive and haughty menial to visible annoyance by her supercilious attitude towards the new car.

Goaded to fury by a long course of deliberate insubordination, some tortured tutor would at last turn upon a pupil and box his ears.

The purpose of the old man wavered, but he seemed goaded by some inward incentive that still enabled him to maintain his ground.

It was his conscience which he had numbed, and smothered, and choked, free at last, and with a merciless goad in its hand.

Undaunted, Captain Barker shouted terse orders, goading the men to greater activity when the flames showed signs of getting beyond control.

Before quitting the amphitheater I was taken by my friend to the gallery from which the bulls were goaded into their separate stalls.

I know I was to blame, but you might have done something yourself if you had been goaded and tormented and derided as I was.

Largely by unparalleled reading in these four years when his poverty goaded him to acquire the skill to earn money with his pen.

Consciousness, goaded on by an insatiable desire to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality or perceives the reality only through the symbol.

Yet they scruple not to goad their bullocks, beat them, half starve them, and let their gaping wounds fester and become corrupt.

His joys forsake him after his wealth is gone, and his strong instincts goad him on towards his wonted pursuit of pleasure.

The physical need of food, clothing, and shelter acts as a goad to drive a man to work, and reason sanctions his natural response.

It was not that abused and outraged submission was goaded into rebellion; it was dormant reason that was suddenly startled into a passing wakefulness.

Now, forsooth, I was to be goaded into dragging the chain of an onerous and troublesome office, for which I felt myself entirely unfit.

Demanded Harry, fairly leaping on his skates toward the boy who had been baiting him until he had goaded him beyond endurance.

It would be so easy to open the eyes of the unsuspecting Daimio, and goad him deftly on until the two brothers were at open enmity.

And all of his flagrant violations of faith, although known too well to his wife, did not goad her to seek release from him.

These had been baffled at every turn, goaded by repeated failure, and now stood shoulder to shoulder in their resistance to a cruel law.

The soldiers were evidently tired with the tedious uneventful march, and the drivers were goaded to irritability by the difficulty of the descent.

Lucas said no more, but he continued to look at his brother with unvarying steadiness till at length, as if goaded thereto, Nap spoke again.

To have his career clogged or goaded by a woman, who when she either loves or hates will dare anything, would be a dreadful calamity.

If I have committed the robbery, I must have been induced by weighty reasons, or goaded to such an act by malice, or something else.

He is perpetually goaded on by covetousness to work the material ruin of others, only so that the ruin of his neighbor may benefit himself.

The females are treated as slaves and are made oftentimes to draw the plow, while the husband goads her on with the whip.

He is a poor, thoughtless man, and he has been goaded on from one thing to another, until he was driven to commit this act.

He had perished from hunger, perhaps, or had hurried himself into the presence of his Maker, goaded to distraction by the paternal taunts.

They gorged upon the scanty store of dried fish if they were not watched, and never caught more unless they were incessantly goaded.

In the girl's heightened voice and frowning brow there was a touch of fury, of goaded pride, that touched Diana with a sudden remorse.

No efforts could goad the wounded tiger to continue the fray, so it and the buffalo were taken out, and two others brought in.

In the dawn of her new ambition the reminder of her humble origin goaded the girl to a fury that dispelled her temporary fear.

As he did so, Sheridan, quick as lightning, sprang up in his place, and goaded the wild mustang at full speed to the fort.

Thereupon the Miller, unknowing what hindered the donkey, took out a knife and goaded it again and again, but still it would not budge.

It can be readily understood that there were some decidedly red-hot goads at my back that day to drive me down under the sea.

The troops were now led on to assail the works; those who flinched were, as before, goaded on by the swords of the officers.

Bruce's great sorrow, that he could realize it for minutes at a time without being goaded to madness or stunned to apathy by the pain.

A roar of applause broke from the audience, a cry of warning and exasperation from the attendants, as the goaded bull suddenly charged the stranger.

And he hurled furious taunts and abuse at him, in the hope of goading him into making the same comparatively merciless end of his prisoners.

Quite a few Americans, however, respected her for her honest idealism and valued her as a goad stinging the social conscience of our complacent public.

All my efforts were therefore directed to pacifying her husband, who, goaded by her sharp tongue, would heap curses on her devoted head.

Edwards had put all of his private fortune into his venture, and this act of tyranny goaded him and his colonists to fury.

Vile rhyming poets, without merit or virtue, sold their villainous productions to the enemies of the state to be used in goading the people to riot.

He had goaded them to desperation with his shameless depravity till they spoke openly of putting him to a violent death, and he laughed.

Their footsteps were marked with such desolation and cruelty that the Russians, goaded to despair, again ventured, like the crushed worm, an impotent resistance.

And arrogance starts up, the consciousness of their dignity and strength goads and spurs them on, till they rave with ungovernable pride.

Yet the present reprieve would for a few moments endure, since the assassin would hesitate to goad his victim to any appeal for help.