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tantalize
in a sentence

show 155 more with this conextual meaning
  • Kitty pauses tantalizingly.†   (source)
  • "Come on," Harry hissed, swerving tantalizingly above her, "come on, come and get me…. up you get now….†   (source)
  • It clattered to a stop, still a few tantalizing feet away.†   (source)
  • The sounds and smells of the tantalizing May afternoon drifted in through the window.†   (source)
  • At first he'd taken the foam mattress up there, but he had to toss it when it began to mildew, and to smell tantalizingly of tomato soup.†   (source)
  • My mind is spinning with new information about the uprising in District 8 and the unlikely but tantalizing possibility of District 13.†   (source)
  • He moves as an animal, and a fury is riding in him, a tantalized search.†   (source)
  • The faster he plants kisses all over my neck, the faster we move together—creating a tantalizing rhythm between us that, according to my pulse, isn't going to last much longer.†   (source)
  • The Herald Tribune had no news of my predicament but the story was all over the Dutch papers, dense blocks of foreign print which hung, tantalizingly, just beyond the reach of my comprehension.†   (source)
  • Noah stroked his lingers through my curls, gently pulling on them in tantalizing movements.†   (source)
  • Adah Price S UNRISE TANTALIZE, evil eyes hypnotize: that is the morning, Congo pink.†   (source)
  • Pitezel's almost hallucinatory description must have tantalized Holmes, for he wrote to Cigrand and offered her a job as his personal secretary, at twice the salary she was making in Keeley.†   (source)
  • In fact, Silas Wegg is reading some financial news of a very tantalizing nature to the seated Mr. Venus, whose pegleg begins to rise from the floor until, at the moment of greatest excitement, it is pointing straight out in front of him.†   (source)
  • His suspicions aroused by the two birth certificates and the tantalizing problem they presented, Adam began to question the familiar, everyday events of his life, and the comings and goings of his mother and father.†   (source)
  • The tantalizing odor reached our meat-starved palates.†   (source)
  • Huckleberry Finn they saved for me until the third grade, tantalizingly holding it back as if it contained the very secrets of life.†   (source)
  • It was during one of those late nights that Eddie Diamond first brought up the tantalizing possibility.†   (source)
  • She was beginning to recognize some of them—they tantalized her sight the way half-heard words in a foreign language sometimes tantalized her hearing, as if by just concentrating harder she could force some meaning out of them.†   (source)
  • Where the worm had passed there remained that tantalizing gap.†   (source)
  • We had already made peace with our lot, and you have to tantalize us with the specter of a hope we had abandoned.†   (source)
  • But the diary notation that most tantalized Dewey was unrelated to the Clutter-Rupp, Methodist-Catholic impasse.†   (source)
  • There's a Mercator girl in a tantalizingly flimsy dress eyeing me from the door leading to the crowded garden.†   (source)
  • They were on the verge of a major discovery, and the glory of it perhaps tantalized them.†   (source)
  • More tantalizing, though, is some preliminary evidence that the two problems might have the same genetic root.†   (source)
  • Her hair lifted tantalizingly in the evening breeze.†   (source)
  • Such studies are tantalizing but severely limited, for they can't explain why DeShawn didn't get the call.†   (source)
  • I couldn't believe that she, the keeper of so many terrifying and tantalizing secrets, was taking me into her confidence.†   (source)
  • Po Campo was always letting slip tantalizing bits of information.†   (source)
  • Another tantalizingly simple way to boost girls' education is to iodize salt.†   (source)
  • Cristian's brief glimpses of a world filled with knowledge tantalized him.†   (source)
  • For me, a middle child among the eight, the mystery was tantalizing.†   (source)
  • But listening to her cogently mapping out what we needed to indict, a tantalizing thought took hold of me.†   (source)
  • Her dark odor came to me, her dusky spiced perfume, stronger than the curious mixture from the pot, tantalizing as I drew nearer and rested back against a wall of matted vine.†   (source)
  • He could picture, as he walked, the kind of underclothing they wore against their svelte feminine parts, filmy, smooth, clinging garments of deepest black or of opalescent pastel radiance with flowering lace borders fragrant with the tantalizing fumes of pampered flesh and scented bath salts rising in a germinating cloud from their blue-white breasts.†   (source)
  • Hearing of this tantalizing place, the emperor greedy and without gratitude—demanded high taxes from the Yao people.†   (source)
  • The president's every move is being scrutinized, but he is unafraid as his gaze lingers on this tantalizing young woman.†   (source)
  • The sleek red maillot rose tantalizing high at the thighs.†   (source)
  • From the food stalls lining the streets wafted tantalizing odors of fried bananas, roast pig, octopus, and chicken with rice.†   (source)
  • The pennant was tantalizingly close, but the pain and dizziness became overwhelming.†   (source)
  • When he heard her on the phone crying and carrying on about Steve, about Arthur, about the whole family falling apart, Tewky flew in and took charge, presenting her with a tantalizing idea.†   (source)
  • It cannot make a flourish, vary the thickness of a line, or tantalize the reader with a lapse into an indecipherable but lovely style.†   (source)
  • In fact, before Dominique started in on thatvous -versus-tuthing, I'd been thinking about taking a plunge into that clear blue water shimmering so tantalizingly in front of us… But then Dominique does me one better by suddenly sitting up, undoing her bikini top, flipping it over the back of her chaise longue, then stretching and saying, "Ah.†   (source)
  • The blaze had unified into a single flame, like the burn of a candle only many times larger, and it swayed tantalizingly, back and forth, back and forth.†   (source)
  • The house tantalized.†   (source)
  • Homer must have known they were ready just by the tantalizing smell of the cooking meat, because he called out from the other room, "Come git it!"†   (source)
  • I wanted only for Nathan to arrive with news of his triumph and an explanation for this unbearably tantalizing mystery.†   (source)
  • It was tantalizing never to be exposed long enough to hear the end.†   (source)
  • The venison cooked with a tantalizing odor.†   (source)
  • No forms turned or twisted, tantalizing, within its bright heart.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless he had had a fine night's sleep and his spirits could not be daunted in the presence of the tantalizing aroma drifting in.†   (source)
  • The idea that the cryptex had been designed by Leonardo da Vinci—former Grand Master of the Priory of Sion—shone as another tantalizing indicator that this was indeed the Priory keystone.   (source)
  • The dense brown forest on either side never seemed to vary, and ahead there was only a new bend in the river to tantalize her.   (source)
    tantalize = make excited about something that is out of reach
  • Crossing the massive nave on a diagonal, Langdon and Sophie remained silent as the elaborate sepulchre revealed itself in tantalizing increments… a black-marble sarcophagus… a reclining statue of Newton… two winged boys… a huge pyramid… and… an enormous orb.   (source)
    tantalizing = making someone excited about getting something
  • She could hear a man's voice across the water, but the fog rolled tantalizingly between her and the ship.   (source)
    tantalizingly = in a manner that makes someone excited about something that is out of reach
  • She would be a tantalizing end to a perfect day.†   (source)
  • Annemarie always tried to prolong this part, to build up the suspense and tantalize her sister.†   (source)
  • Or, tantalizingly, It was toilet cleaner she used.†   (source)
  • The delicious smell of baking salmon wafted tantalizingly in their direction.†   (source)
  • "Something better," he says, attempting to be tantalizing.†   (source)
  • Oh, now, I'm glad you mentioned Grindelwald," says Skeeter with such a tantalizing smile.†   (source)
  • As she moved closer, the heat of her body was tantalizing.†   (source)
  • Music could be heard from within, hypnotic, tantalizing chords of a belyael.†   (source)
  • There was something strangely tantalizing and forbidden about the idea.†   (source)
  • She looked both familiar and tantalizingly foreign.†   (source)
  • The business of the mattress box was one of the things that most tantalized Dewey.†   (source)
  • I chase after her, my fingers brushing the wetness of her face for one tantalizing second.†   (source)
  • Again, she wore no makeup but her scent was there to tantalize.†   (source)
  • The wizard swayed the deadly candle tantalizingly about, causing the rays to shift back and forth.†   (source)
  • Lightning splits the sky, illuminating the battlefield for a tantalizing moment.†   (source)
  • She might both inspire and tantalize them with her glare.†   (source)
  • Not to know — to snatch at hints and portents, at intimations, at tantalizing whispers — it is as bad as being haunted.†   (source)
  • The anger in his voice hinted that he couldn't believe I'd told the therapist this tantalizing tidbit.†   (source)
  • They gazed at east other Harry felt that the answer was dangling invisibly in the air above them, tantalizingly close.†   (source)
  • As Harry's scar continued to burn and the merry, blond-haired boy swam tantalizingly in his memory, he learned to suppress any sign of pain or discomfort, for the other two showed nothing but impatience at the mention of the thief.†   (source)
  • Clary had dropped her stele; it lay feet away in the filthy snow, shining with a tantalizing glimmer.†   (source)
  • The whole day struck him as a tantalizing dance, in which each of them had taken turns leading, one pushing, the other pulling, and vice versa.†   (source)
  • Beth was hyperattuned to his every movement and gesture, tantalized by the quiet way he'd take her hand as they trailed behind Ben on their evening walks, then release it as soon as Ben rounded into view again.†   (source)
  • And maybe she had been leaning toward the door, tantalized by the fact that she could hear the voices, could nearly make them out, but not quite.†   (source)
  • The pimp spun the turban high on his finger like a trophy and kept himself skipping inches ahead of her finger tips as he led her in a tantalizing circle around the square congested with people who were howling with laughter and pointing to Yossarian with derision when Milo strode up with a grim look of haste and puckered his lips reprovingly at the unseemly spectacle of so much vice and frivolity.†   (source)
  • Cooper stopped a moment—off balance and close enough so that Max could see a tantalizing glimpse of the Agent's target patch.†   (source)
  • We made love slowly and tenderly, and the passion we felt for each other was a dizzying rediscovery, tantalizing in its newness.†   (source)
  • His tantalizing words "I'm just a patsy" hung in the air, suggesting that he was some sort of scapegoat.†   (source)
  • Officers' clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses.†   (source)
  • All who could see the tantalizing show stared apprehensively, unsure of what would happen next, but convinced that a display of tremendous power was forthcoming.†   (source)
  • The day was warm, a little windy, and leaf shadows, supple emanations from the tree boughs that brushed the cell's barred window, tantalized Perry's tamed squirrel.†   (source)
  • Every now and then, as though he perceived some minute thing, a sudden alert, tantalized look would creep over the little man's face, and he would gaze slowly around him, quite slyly.†   (source)
  • The two capsules still glistened in the ashtray, and she wondered drowsily if he had forgotten them, wondered if he again would flirt and tantalize her with their pink menace.†   (source)
  • She remembered the symphony so clearly from her past—again, those concerts in Cracow—but here in Brooklyn, because she had no phonograph and because she always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the Pastoral had completely eluded her, forever tantalizingly announcing itself but remaining unheard like some gorgeous but mute bird flitting away as she pursued it through the foliage of a dark forest.†   (source)
  • He frowned in the street, the more tantalized, somehow, by seeing at the last minute that the stranger was tattooed with a butterfly on the inner side of his wrist; an intimate place, the wrist appeared to be.†   (source)
  • Brucie, making a twanging noise with his lips, had shot forth again, and he was darting rapidly everywhere at once, delighted and tantalized, running in circles around William Wallace, pointing to his fish.†   (source)
  • Her eagerness tantalized him, goaded him into sharper listening.†   (source)
  • There was the tantalizing melancholy in the tingling scent of burning hickory wood.†   (source)
  • Words here and there, phrases shimmering like distant sails tantalized him, but never drew near.†   (source)
  • And he would get up and go out into a world which seemed very unfamiliar, but with a tantalizing unfamiliarity like the world of boyhood to which an old man returns.†   (source)
  • There was in his eyes a pensive, brooding amusement, as of a man who had been long confronted and tantalized by a riddle whose answer seemed always just on the verge of escaping him, but prodding him irresistibly on to seek its solution.†   (source)
  • But when he had climbed down and untied his horse from the back of the buggy and stood in the twilight road, grinning tantalizingly at her, she could not smother her own grin as she drove off.†   (source)
  • Those last days seemed to slip through my fingers like egg white and I almost wished the end would come, for the waiting was so hopeless and so tantalizing.†   (source)
  • Nobody can be a maestro without being subject to these excitements, so Lancelot seldom minded when he got his face slapped in a melee about shields cut a bouche or about whether it was a good idea to have a guige on your shield or not Sometimes Uncle Dap was tantalized into beating him, but he bore that also.†   (source)
  • Soon's Ah kick dis black trash outer mah way," answered Mammy loudly, swinging the carpetbag at a black buck who loitered tantalizingly in front of her and making him leap aside.†   (source)
  • The fragrance was tantalizing and Swede jammed his impatiently between a roll and ate it half-roasted.†   (source)
  • She had a genius for frank passion; she teased him, tantalized him, but she was tender and unafraid.†   (source)
  • "O, Tessy!" he went on, "I CANNOT think why you are so tantalizing.†   (source)
  • She turns tantalizing inviting glances on you.†   (source)
  • As she spoke she looked distractingly pretty and tantalizing.†   (source)
  • I mean, what a tantalizing, capricious little woman!†   (source)
  • And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls you just got enough to tantalize you.†   (source)
  • Bo passed her once, and cried, tantalizingly: "My, Nell, but you're growing romantic!†   (source)
  • I cannot imagine what you mean, and to talk of bread where there are no ovens is only tantalizing.'†   (source)
  • It certainly had not been one half as tantalizing.†   (source)
  • Lately, he had assured himself that the altered comrade would not tantalize him with a persistent curiosity, but he felt certain that during the first period of leisure his friend would ask him to relate his adventures of the previous day.†   (source)
  • And Flo said in her cool sweet drawl, somehow audacious and tantalizing, "Shore you two will want to spoon."†   (source)
  • "Fust off an' for instance here's one who's double-crossin' you," said Pearce, in slow, tantalizing speech, as if he wore out this suspense to torture Kells.†   (source)
  • They curved tantalizingly, and she could catch just a glimpse of two pairs of masculine feet in the hall below.†   (source)
  • But the road began to wind up; it turned and twisted in tantalizing lazy curves; it was in no hurry to surmount a hill that began to assume proportions of a mountain; it was leisurely, as were all things in Mexico except strife.†   (source)
  • I knew the gifts I already had were not those of which friends had thrown out such tantalizing hints, and my teacher said the presents I was to have would be even nicer than these.†   (source)
  • He was full of the most tantalizing thoughts about how wonderful it would be if only he were permitted to hold her close, kiss her mouth, bite her, even.†   (source)
  • Her true intentions and affections so far were veiled behind a tantalizing evasiveness which made her all the more desirable.†   (source)
  • …new lil brother, Arrowsmith") debating with a slight thin-bearded man—Dr. William T. Smith, assistant in bio-chemistry—the possibility of increasing the effects of all enzymes by doses of X-rays, as he heard one associate-member vituperate another for his notions of cell-chemistry and denounce Ehrlich as "the Edison of medical science," Martin perceived new avenues of exciting research; he stood on a mountain, and unknown valleys, craggy tantalizing paths, were open to his feet.†   (source)
  • But I should just like a few virtuous people who have condemned me in the past, about Arabella and other things, to have been in my tantalizing position with you through these late weeks!†   (source)
  • He found it impossible to study conic sections; something in their calm and tantalizing respectability breathing defiantly through Mr. Rooney's fetid parlors distorted their equations into insoluble anagrams.†   (source)
  • Only, in so far as Clyde was concerned, it was complicated with a mystery which was tantalizing and something more—irritating; for when it came to anything which related to sex in the Griffiths family, no parents could possibly have been more squeamish.†   (source)
  • It is more than this earthly wretch called Me deserves—you spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom—hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms round you I almost expect them to pass through you as through air!†   (source)
  • Once we put him in a little chaise and drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but all at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take it ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of tantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his ears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped to think about it.†   (source)
  • Steerforth was considerate, too; and showed his consideration, in one particular instance, in an unflinching manner that was a little tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and the rest.†   (source)
  • To increase that influence was coveted excitement; to cast it off might be to regain serenity; to leave it as it stood was tantalizing.†   (source)
  • While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing, and declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europe bringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the heartless man.†   (source)
  • The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.†   (source)
  • Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.†   (source)
  • A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.†   (source)
  • Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the man, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was really in earnest.†   (source)
  • Boldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before they turned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same dominative and tantalizing graciousness.†   (source)
  • But her faith in the good spot which exists in the heart of the naughtiest, sauciest, most tantalizing little ragamuffin gave her patience, skill, and in time success, for no mortal boy could hold out long with Father Bhaer shining on him as benevolently as the sun, and Mother Bhaer forgiving him seventy times seven.†   (source)
  • Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines.†   (source)
  • On account of your rebellious manner to me I was tempted to go further than I should have done; and when you still would keep playing the same tantalizing part I went further still, and married her.†   (source)
  • Henchard himself was mentally and physically unfit for grubbing subtleties from soiled paper; he had in a modern sense received the education of Achilles, and found penmanship a tantalizing art.†   (source)
  • The repeated specific allusions of Flask to "that whale," as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its tail—these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder.†   (source)
  • …submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis impossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe.†   (source)
  • It is not clear what Homer meant by this tantalizing fragment of a tradition, but as early as the fourth century B.C. Italian historians decided that this story had to be grafted onto the tale of Romulus and Remus to give their city an ancient and royal origin.†   (source)
  • And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg—"Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!"†   (source)
  • Admittedly, his letters were just as empty of proper news as Ron and Hermione's, but at least they contained words of caution and consolation instead of tantalising hints: I know this must be frustrating for you… Keep your nose clean and everything will be OK… Be careful and don't do anything rash… Well, thought Harry, as he crossed Magnolia Crescent, turned into Magnolia Road and headed towards the darkening play park, he had (by and . large) done as Sirius advised.†   (source)
    unconventional spelling: This is the British spelling. Americans spell it tantalizing.
  • It was not as if he were tantalising her.†   (source)
  • It moved them: the temporary and abject helplessness of that which tantalised and frustrated desire; the smooth and superior shape in which volition dwelled doomed to be at stated and inescapable intervals victims of periodical filth.†   (source)
    unconventional spelling: This is the British spelling. Americans spell it tantalized.
  • It did not appear, and Swann tantalised himself with alternate pictures of the approaching moment, as one in which Remi would say to him: "Sir, the lady is there," or as one in which Remi would say to him: "Sir, the lady was not in any of the cafes."†   (source)
  • It certainly was not there when she came upstairs; had Louise dropped it? or was some tantalising spook at play, showing her fairy letters where none existed?†   (source)
  • Tantalising for the poor dead.†   (source)
  • One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton—a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck—when Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist.†   (source)
  • At the time he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness.†   (source)
  • For, having satisfied himself that Frank Cheeryble could have no knowledge of, or acquaintance with, the mysterious young lady, it began to occur to him that even he himself might never see her again; upon which hypothesis he built up a very ingenious succession of tormenting ideas which answered his purpose even better than the vision of Mr Frank Cheeryble, and tantalised and worried him, waking and sleeping.†   (source)
  • Tantalised and excited, beyond all bearing, and unable to fathom the mystery without neglecting his duty, he confided the whole secret to Newman Noggs, imploring him to be on the watch next night; to follow the girl home; to set on foot such inquiries relative to the name, condition, and history of her mistress, as he could, without exciting suspicion; and to report the result to him with the least possible delay.†   (source)
  • These were proud times for Mrs Nickleby; never was anybody half so discreet and sage as she, or half so mysterious withal; and never were there such cunning generalship, and such unfathomable designs, as she brought to bear upon Mr Frank, with the view of ascertaining whether her suspicions were well founded: and if so, of tantalising him into taking her into his confidence and throwing himself upon her merciful consideration.†   (source)
  • O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?†   (source)
  • Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?†   (source)
  • I know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my sake, I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms.†   (source)
  • Jones, who more than once already had experienced this frolicsome disposition of the heathen goddess, was now again doomed to be tantalized in the like manner; for he arrived at the door of Mrs Fitzpatrick about ten minutes after the departure of Sophia.†   (source)
  • Rats and mice, and such small gear, had long ago been starved, or had emigrated to better quarters: and, in their stead, appeared gloves, bands, scarfs, hair-pins, and many other little devices, almost as ingenious in their way as rats and mice themselves, for the tantalisation of mankind.†   (source)
    unconventional spelling: This is the British spelling. Americans spell it tantalization.
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