Though the question was meant to be teasing, Lauren considered it seriously.

Ultimately, teasing out the technical problems may be only half the battle.

At this point, I should caution against taking my Neville-teasing entirely seriously.

The words were teasing, but there were serious undertones to his voice.

A handsome man? His tone was teasing, but his question was serious.

For five minutes they discussed Blomkvist's shortcomings in the most irritating terms.

Sabina smiled, pleased that he found their situation amusing rather than irritating.

The man in question would have no idea how irritating it was.

The two-second delay on the line, that irritating echo, didn't help matters.

Some people find them drying and irritating because they often contain alcohol.

Donaldson's betrayal was seen as particularly galling, given his impeccable republican credentials.

The answer is galling to EU diplomats and foreign ministers, but telling.

But the blow at the moment of the stroke is very galling.

The last words were galling, in the extreme, to Raoul de Fontaine.

The knowledge was more galling than the bare fact of his abduction.

Halfway across the cabin's great room, he heard that pesky noise again.

Sure, the chief had suffered a pesky episode a few years back.

Well, for example, there are those pesky laws of physics and biology.

However those other pesky sprinters aren't at all intimidated by his presence.

That pesky Shepherd Dog's sorta responsible for any trouble you might've had.

One of them said the action was unjustified, vexatious, premature and excessive.

The delay was vexatious; but Saturday the twenty-second would do as well.

The whole position is in the highest degree artificial, misleading, and vexatious.

Perhaps the most vexatious god was he who ruled the Floating Islands.

This debate was eventually parked by Justice Greves, as ingermane and vexatious.

You can even bring your friend-youknow, the one Roy was pestering.

I guessed that Spelikon must have been pestering him with questions too.

Why did you tell your neighbor that a reporter was pestering you?

And I kept on pestering the man. And pester Pelé Toye did.

But that was very far from setting a term to his pestering.

What a bothersome world this is; there is no finality about anything.

But it was bothersome to know that they were coming toward him.

But the police were so bothersome in this part of the world.

He frowned irritably, as though I'd asked him something bothersome and insignificant.

Without their marshy breeding ground, those bothersome biting insects had largely disappeared.

You bury your seamen upon the pestiferous shores; and, shocking to humanity!

The air is pestiferous; warm and diseased, it fans us as we approach.

Yet the atmosphere of pestiferous fragrance had attracted, rather than repelled.

There was really only one drawback-thepestiferous draft-boards that never stopped snooping round.

There was only this pestiferous overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed.

You know this plaguy memory of mine-whata forgetful fellow I am.

There is here no tiresome rivalry of wits, no plaguy intellectual effort.

There's some pretty bad travelling and a plaguy bit of swamp ahead.

What, Mary, always singing doleful ditties, and moping over these plaguy books.

It'll cost you plaguy sight more'n that, and blood, too, like enough.

TRYGAEUS My legs pain me; it is such a plaguey long journey.

Now be keerful and not run afoul of the plaguey lye leech.

He was only too plaguey sure of himself to feel any anxiety.

Kiss me, lad, if you can find room between these plaguey bandages.

La!-forsure he writes not as he did, but is plaguey busy.

Drummer had started crying, a nettlesome sound, and he wouldn't be pacified.

The most nettlesome issues for industry are security and accounting.

The timing involved in selling it, though, can be nettlesome.

A former senior executive at one of the two companies also found the regulations nettlesome.

This leads us to the nettlesome subject of authenticity.