irk

English

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irk^¹

/ɜːk/ UK
/ɝk/ US

Rhymes with -ɜː(ɹ)k

Where it comes from

Inherited from Middle English irken (“to tire, grow weary”), from Old Norse yrkja (“to work”), from Proto-Germanic *wurkijaną (“to work”), from Proto-Indo-European *werǵ- (“to work”). Cognate with Icelandic yrkja (“to compose”), Swedish yrka (“to urge, argue”), Old English wyrċan (“to work”). Doublet of work.

verb irks · irking · irked

transitive to irritate; annoy; bother It irks me doing all this work and have someone wreck it.

noun irks

An annoyance. The trade-off between computation cost and precision results in tuning parameters […] being exposed to the user, a major irk to practitioners of data science.

Irk^²

proper noun

A river in Greater Manchester, England, which joins the River Irwell in Manchester city centre.

Translations

Every language

verb to irritate; annoy; bother

Español	fastidiar, molestar, irritar
Português	aborrecer
Français	agacer, irriter
Deutsch	ärgern
Italiano	infastidire, irritare, seccare
Русский	раздража́ть razdražátʹ

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MLA

"irk." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/irk. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

irk. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/irk

Chicago

"irk." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/irk.

BibTeX

@misc{irk_2026,
  title = {irk},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/irk},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}

irk