Titillating

ppl. a. [f. prec. + -ING².] That titillates; pleasantly exciting, exhilarating, stimulating.

1712–4.  Pope, Rape Lock, V. 84. The pungent grains of titilating dust.

1809–10.  Coleridge, Friend (1818), I. 27. A petty titillating sting, from affected point and wilful antithesis.

1902.  Miss Broughton, in Times, 11 Nov. An object that has nothing of the … abnormal or the titillating.

  ¶ b.  Itching, tingling; craving, hankering.

1858.  Times, 20 Nov., 8/5. The honest householder who hates the Game Laws, and sometimes discourses upon the wickedness of preserving, now goes to market and sits down with a titillating palate to his plump dainties.

  Hence Titilatingly adv.

1876.  R. M. Jephson, He would be a Soldier! x. 103. He had a way of bringing his irate countenance so near his victim’s face that the chevaux-de-frise [moustache] wandered titillatingly about the wretched recruit’s face, and woe to him if he lifted a hand to scratch or rub.

1900.  Miss Broughton, Foes in Law, xxiii. 305. To be the appanage of a fashionable preacher, while he titillatingly lashes smart bonnets, and flourishes on freely taken sittings—this is its fulfilment!