to provoke = to stir up or call forth, to cause or give rise to, to incite or stimulate Provoking (the act of being provoked) is often combined in hyphenated form with other words. thought-provoking - to cause you to think (usually intense thinking) anger-provoking - to incite anger "His opionated writing was anger-provoking." fear-provoking - to make you afraid "That fear-provoking movie about zombies should not be seen by small children." accident-provoking - to cause accidents to occur "That hill is prone to mudslides which have been accident-provoking."

"Thought-provoking" = it makes you think, it stimulates thinking. It is a very common phrase. A thought-provoking sculpture. A thought-provoking book. A thought-provoking comment. A thought-provoking experience.

It simply means that it makes you think about it. If a painting is thought-provoking, it makes you think how the artist painted it, what his motivation was, why he painted it, symbolism, etc.

Hi there! In this case thought- provoking means that you go to the art gallery and no matter if you think it's good or not it provokes that you start thinking about it. You try to interpret it, you judge it. You form a personal opinion = thought-provoking. If you don't know what a word means you could use a monolingual dictionary like the oxford advanced learner's dictionary or you could use a thesaurus. Do you know what a thesaurus is?? it is a dictionary which gives synonyms. You will definitively find another word for thought-provoking in this dictionary. Hope this helps. Good luck, patty

"A thought-provoking question" - A question that makes you think is worth asking…