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whet

used in a sentence
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Definition to increase a sense or desire

or more rarely:  to sharpen a knife or other cutting edge
  • The appetizer whet our appetite for what was to come.
whet = increased
  • Her review whet my appetite to read the book.
    • whet = increased
  • Her question whet my curiosity.
    • whet = increased
  • I have an idea that Van Helsing thinks he knows, too, but he will only let out enough at a time to whet curiosity.
    Bram Stoker  --  Dracula
    • whet = increase
  • Because there is a force that wants you to realize your destiny; it whets your appetite with a taste of success.
    Paulo Coelho  --  The Alchemist
    • whets = increases a desire
  • His hands are cold as ice, and an hour ago I found him whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka knife which he now always carries with him.
    Bram Stoker  --  Dracula
    • whetting = sharpening
  • His glimpse that he have had, whet his appetite only and enkeen his desire.
    Bram Stoker  --  Dracula
    • whet = increased (a desire)
  • Then I went out into the kitchen, took the steel out of the rack and began to whet the bayonet.
    James Lincoln Collier  --  My Brother Sam is Dead
  • Possibly the rescue of Charles Nalle had whetted her appetite for adventure.
    Ann Petry  --  Harriet Tubman
  • He'd made the blade himself, mounted it and whetted it sharp.
    Alexander Solzhenitsyn  --  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
  • The poor morsel of food only whetted desire.
    Mark Twain  --  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  • 10:10 If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.
    The Bible  --  Ecclesiastes
  • Then she began to whet her knife.
    C.S. Lewis  --  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • Thou hidest a thousand daggers in thy thoughts Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart, To stab at half an hour of my life.
    William Shakespeare  --  Henry IV, Part 2
  • His appetite had been whetted by the thirty pounds he had made in the summer, and he wanted now to make a couple of hundred.
    W. Somerset Maugham  --  Of Human Bondage
  • These fragments of nourishment served only to whet my hunger.
    H.G. Wells  --  The War of the Worlds
  • The prospect of so idyllic an interim added to the inspired stealth with which he whetted his wire, filed it to a Umber stiletto fineness.
    Truman Capote  --  In Cold Blood
  • And the Rwandan example whetted the appetites of some of Burundi's Hutu elites.
    Tracy Kidder  --  Strength in What Remains
  • Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?
    William Shakespeare  --  The Merchant of Venice
  • She had everyone piled in the kitchen, whetting appetites with marinated olives.
    Nora Roberts  --  Blood Brothers

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