Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To excite (another) by exposing something desirable while keeping it out of reach.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To tease or torment by presenting something desirable to the view, and frustrating expectation by keeping it out of reach; excite expectations or hopes or fears in (a person) which will not be realized; tease; torment; vex. Also spelled tantalise.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive to tease (someone) by offering something desirable but keeping it out of reach
- v. transitive to bait (someone) by showing something desirable but leaving them unsatisfied
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To tease or torment by presenting some good to the view and exciting desire, but continually frustrating the expectations by keeping that good out of reach; to tease; to torment.
WordNet 3.0
- v. harass with persistent criticism or carping
Etymologies
- From Tantalus (Τάνταλος) in Greek mythology, who was condemned to Tartarus in the underworld. There, he had to stand for eternity in water that receded from him when he stooped to drink, beneath fruit trees whose branches were always out of reach. (Wiktionary)
- From Latin Tantalus, Tantalus; see Tantalus. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Many words come from Greek roots, but the roots for "tantalize" run all the way to Greek myth about a misbehaving son of Zeus named Tantalus.”
“Let's thwart those blood-thirsty savages, who, in the name of Islam, target innocents and tantalize the taliban-bashers.”
“ECLIPSE can pounce on you like a ravenous jaguar, cloud your judgment like a dense fog, or tantalize your senses with kaleidoscopic color-tones.”
Twilight Lexicon » Soundtrack Examiner Interviews Howard Shore
“The point is to tantalize the public and belittle the administration.”
The Huffington Post: Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Dumping on The Obamas
“And James Bond is a stretch, though Brown is younger than Sean Connery and those JB initials do tantalize.”
“To always say more than it intends, to conjure up possibilities that set us off on internal flights of fancy, to gesture beyond itself in myriad ways and to tantalize with the shadows of other stories, hiding in the corners of the most realistic of narratives.”
“Mr. Ashbery has lived with the radiant and elusive prose poems of the "Illuminations" for a lifetime; they tantalize him still.”
The Wall Street Journal: Foreign to Familiar, Essence Intact
“A decade on, despite all the investigations and reports, they still tantalize: Why didn't the FBI brass follow up on field reports of visiting young Arabs trying the learn how to fly jumbo jets?”
“From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.”
“The women's colorful dress, rainbow-spectrum saris that tantalize the eyes, dot the landscape and stand out against the men in plain white sarongs with gold trim, usually shirtless and full of smell.”
The Huffington Post: Jordan Mallah: My Powerful Pilgrimage to Chidambram, Tamil Nadu, India
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tantalize’.
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The "ize" have it
accessorize, finalize, computerize, prioritize, anodize, belizean, bizerte, capsize, citizen, denize, dizen, diazotize and 98 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Mythical Qualities
Adjectives derived from mythological figures
saturnine, apollonian, dionysian, oedipal, mercurial, martial, erotic, aphrodisiac, orphic, titanic, herculean, puckish and 20 more...
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Words of seduction
nibble, caress, writhing, whisper, penetrate, lick, flushed, passionate, embrace, nudity, intimacy, tempt and 17 more...
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Censure (v.)
Someone must have had an inferiority complex.
vituperate, vilify, trounce, traduce, slander, scold, revile, reprove, reprimand, reprehend, remonstrate, rebuke and 37 more...
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loosen lessons
atmolyze, autolyze, cryptanalyze, photolyze, pyrolyze, realize, alize, cordialize, actualize, cyclize, artilize, aerosolize and 61 more...
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Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
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Wicked Cool Words
These words have been posted on my vocabulary tumblr, wickedcoolwords.tumblr.com!
miasma, libation, laconic, denigrating, deontic, accinge, liquescent, quagmire, exiguous, dirigible, lambasted, lambaste and 89 more...
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Serendipity's Words
defenestration, mercurial, syzygy, wicked, iniquitous, metastable, demimonde, entropic, ephemeral, irreligious, frisbee, manifold and 474 more...
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pagecrusher's Words
fugu, ilk, rigamarole, superfluous, dearth, sacrosanct, moniker, bifurcate, villainous, onus, brazen, odin and 268 more...
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Favorite Words
symbologist, articulate, sushi, chinchilla, flagrant, cosmic, perforate, alacrity, gooseflesh, xenophobic, bamboozle, squirrel and 90 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Namesakes
Words derived from names, be they historical, literary, or mythological.
quixotic, cereal, odyssey, jovial, mercurial, erotic, achilles' heel, confucianism, lovecraftian, narcissism, echo, fallopian and 101 more...
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GRE list 1
Bloviate, Bacchanalia, mirth, covet, inconsequential, prescient, heresy, revelry, modality, gentrify, vitiate, tantalize and 182 more...
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DreamieGrl's Words
integral, serendipidy, cordial, interesting, crucial, placate, superfluous, supercilious, scintillating, lush, tryst, mythical and 111 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tantalize.
rolig Oroboros, for anyone who loves etymology and morphology, that word is like fingernails on a blackboard. What is -nypo- supposed to mean? Nov 18, 2009
oroboros Also see anonyponymous. Nov 18, 2009
rolig The short yet circuitous answer is: because some people are surprised to learn that this is an eponym.
The word comes from the Greek myth about Tantalus, whom the gods punished by tantalizing him for all eternity. Feb 4, 2009
sarra Click the little "OE" icon above and be enlightened! Feb 4, 2009
jennarenn rolig, why is this on your surprisingly eponymous list? Feb 3, 2009