Word.ws English Dictionary

tantalising

tantalising is the present participle and gerund of tantalise.

tantalising is the alternative spelling of tantalizing.

Meaning of tantalizing

Adjective

tantalizing (comparative more tantalizing, superlative most tantalizing)

  1. Teasing; tempting, especially that which is beyond reach.
    • ...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.1851, Herman Melville, chapter 133, in Moby Dick

See all 2 meanings of tantalizing

Forms of tantalising

Adjective
comparativemore tantalising
superlativemost tantalising
Noun
pluraltantalisings

Words formed from tantalising

Questions about tantalising

What is tantalising the present participle and gerund of?
Tantalising is the present participle and gerund of tantalise.

Words near tantalising in the dictionary

  1. tantalise
  2. tantalised
  3. tantaliser
  4. tantalisers
  5. tantalises
  6. tantalising
  7. tantalisingly
  8. tantalisings
  9. tantalism
  10. tantalisms
  11. tantalite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tantalising (page history and authors); tantalizing (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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Cite this entry: “tantalising.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tantalising. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.