titillate

A good newspaper seeks scoops that illuminate reality and don’t merely titillate.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025

There's little doubt that his mass of executive orders on day one will feature some eye-catching actions designed to titillate his base.

From BBC ● Jan. 19, 2025

If they were straightforward exploitation films — explicitly meant to horrify, titillate or just in general get the adrenaline pumping — they'd be as innocuous as any other action movie created in that style.

From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2019

Call "Three Billboards" moral-outrage comedy, or simply outrage porn—the movie is a feeble attempt to titillate terminally-jaded moviegoers.

From New York Times ● Jan. 18, 2018

Today, when everything that I do has an urgency, I would not spend one hour in the preparation of a book which had the ambition to perhaps titillate some readers.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey

Ironically, the film mirrors the callow cinematic dynamics it critiques: It titillates, even as it scolds.

From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2023

Verhoeven’s world is the exception that titillates not to challenge the rule but to sucker viewers into overlooking it, ignoring it, and dismissing it.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 15, 2016

The title Hot Feminist titillates, and the content is controversial in a bland sort of way, if you’ve never read anything about feminism except what its detractors purport that it’s about.

From The Guardian ● May 20, 2015

The chemistry between these two groups isn’t always perfect, but the combination still titillates — more, at any rate, than Jeff Koons’s recently exhibited “Made in Heaven” series of the early 1990s.

From New York Times ● Feb. 10, 2011

It would kill us to drink Cologne water, but the perfume titillates the sense, and so we sprinkle it upon our handkerchiefs.

From Lessons in Life A Series of Familiar Essays by Timothy Titcomb

It was once the job of “sleazy” tabloids to destroy lives with lurid gossip that titillated the public but lacked public interest in the high-minded sense.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2025

Which suggests voters aren’t nearly as titillated by all that sparkle and shine as the political mentioners would like to think.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 9, 2025

It allowed them to feel self-righteous and titillated at the same time, an intoxicating combination that no fact can compete with.

From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2023

It harks back to the golden age of weird prime-time shows like “Twin Peaks” or “Lost,” which delighted, shocked, titillated and annoyed, but never in quite the way audiences expected.

From New York Times ● Apr. 1, 2023

The prosecution of Marsha Colbey eventually caught the attention of the press, which was titillated by another “dangerous mother” story.

From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson

In fact, in the hoo-hah over the Lakers, titillating to the media on both coasts, Mr. Trump has been a non-factor.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

After that, his unclaimed body began its wanderings: as a greeter for an Oklahoma funeral home, as a sideshow attraction for touring carnivals, and even in a titillating 1933 pre-Code film, “Narcotic.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 4, 2025

This conceit, too, is recycled — either from the nearest Madame Tussauds, or from West’s 2016 “Famous” video, a far more titillating and genuine transgression.

From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2024

I acknowledge that chaos is titillating, and change can be exciting, and I understand the lure of joining an elite conference and what that can mean as far as prestige and visibility.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 4, 2023

For audiences reared on the regular, predictable patterns of Haydn and Mozart, the Eroica’s many noisy surprises would have been both titillating and bewildering.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall