Word.ws English Dictionary

arresting

/əˈɹɛstɪŋ/

arresting adjective: striking, gripping. Also the present participle and gerund of arrest.

Adjective

arresting (comparative more arresting, superlative most arresting)

  1. (figuratively) Striking, gripping.
    • There's a little of each in "Julien Donkey-Boy," a visually arresting, dramatically blurry portrait of a schizophrenic.2001, New York Times Theater Reviews, The New York Times Film Reviews, 1999-2000, page 146
    • This story of how American originality lost its way is arresting and well told. On an alternate timeline without Donald Trump in office dismantling the American scientific establishment and Elon Musk kneecapping the American state, it might have been the manifesto of a new politics.2025 March 18, Samuel Moyn, “Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 Mar 2025

Also used as

arresting is also the present participle and gerund of arrest.

Examples of arresting in a sentence

  • The arresting officer asked the suspect for his details.
  • This story of how American originality lost its way is arresting and well told.
  • The only armed men Gross shows us in action are arresting demonstrators at European antimilitary protests.

All 17 example sentences with arresting

Forms of arresting

comparativemore arresting
superlativemost arresting

Words formed from arresting

Phrases with arresting

Questions about arresting

What does arresting mean?
Arresting means striking, gripping.
What part of speech is arresting?
Arresting is an adjective.
How do you pronounce arresting?
Arresting is pronounced /əˈɹɛstɪŋ/.

Words near arresting in the dictionary

  1. arrester beds
  2. arresters
  3. arrestest
  4. arresteth
  5. arrestin
  6. arresting
  7. arresting gear
  8. arresting gears
  9. arrestingly
  10. arrestingness
  11. arrestins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: arresting (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-arresting.wav.

Cite this entry: “arresting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/arresting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.