Word.ws English Dictionary

whet someone's appetite

whet someone's appetite verb: to increase or stimulate someone's desire, interest, or eagerness for something, often by providing a small preview or taste.

Verb

whet someone's appetite (third-person singular simple present whets someone's appetite, present participle whetting someone's appetite, simple past and past participle whetted someone's appetite or whet someone's appetite)

  1. to increase or stimulate someone's desire, interest, or eagerness for something, often by providing a small preview or taste
    • [H]e had been able to demand a monthly rent worth fifty times the eight pounds he had previously received from El Shanqeety. This revelation had whet his appetite and he had informed the residents through Amm Sadeq his willingness to pay the same amount to anyone who was thinking of leaving their...2001, Sonallah Ibrahim, translated by Anthony Calderbank, chapter 17, in Zaat, Cairo; New York, N.Y.: The American University in Cairo Press, published 2005, →ISBN, page 332

Forms of whet someone's appetite

third-person singular presentwhets someone's appetite
present participlewhetting someone's appetite
past participlewhetted someone's appetite
pastwhetted someone's appetite
past participlewhet someone's appetite
pastwhet someone's appetite

Questions about whet someone's appetite

What does whet someone's appetite mean?
Whet someone's appetite means to increase or stimulate someone's desire, interest, or eagerness for something, often by providing a small preview or taste.
What part of speech is whet someone's appetite?
Whet someone's appetite is a verb.
What is the past tense of whet someone's appetite?
The past tense of whet someone's appetite is whetted someone's appetite.

Words near whet someone's appetite in the dictionary

  1. Wherwell
  2. wherwith
  3. whet
  4. whet slate
  5. whet slates
  6. whet someone's appetite
  7. whether
  8. whethering
  9. whethersoever
  10. whetile
  11. whetiles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whet someone's appetite (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “whet someone's appetite.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whet_someone%27s_appetite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.