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

Each appearing in a set of doorways on Arnulfo Maldonado’s strikingly spare set, they’re the gateways to all of the notions that taunt, torment and titillate Usher.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 26, 2022

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

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

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

You could have made her very effects-y but we pulled back from that and said, “No, we want the audience to empathize with her rather than just be titillated by some effects-y thing.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 22, 2018

As historian Peter Staudenmaier recently wrote in Aeon, titillated conversations about the Nazis as occult masters just make it harder to talk about the realities of fascism.

From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2017

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

Gay kisses and scenes of queer physical affection aren’t exactly titillating, or worse, made into inspiring coming-out vignettes perfectly primed for Pride season watchlists.

From Salon ● Mar. 1, 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

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

It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier.

From "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer