incite
- 01 C1 Advanced
to encourage someone to do something violent, illegal, or unpleasant.
to instigate or provoke a specific action, typically one that is violent, unlawful, or socially disruptive.
Simple“The speaker was accused of trying to incite a riot outside the building.”
In context“The prosecution argued that the defendant's social media posts were specifically designed to incite racial hatred and civil unrest.”
UsageAlways takes a direct object, usually a noun representing a negative action like 'violence', 'hatred', or 'rebellion'.
PitfallHe was arrested for inciting to a riot. He was arrested for inciting a riot.The verb 'incite' is transitive and takes a direct object; do not use the preposition 'to' before the noun.
“The coach in charge of Benfica at the time suggested that the Brazil forward incited opposing players with his celebrations after scoring.”
“In a separate case, Chow was arrested in June 2021 for "inciting" the public to take part in that year's vigil and later found guilty.”
From Middle French inciter, from Latin incitō (“to set in motion, hasten, urge, incite”), from in (“in, on”) + citō (“to set in motion, urge”), frequentative of cieō (“to rouse, excite, call”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.