intriguing

comparative more intriguing · superlative most intriguing

1. Causing a desire to know more; mysterious.

   As a result, while the train was being shunted at Bombay, the buffers became locked, producing a situation most intriguing for the onlookers, but exasperating for the exalted passengers and the unhappy railway authorities.

   1945 September and October, C. Hamilton Ellis, “Royal Trains—V”, in Railway Magazine, page 249

   Synonyms: arcane, cryptic, enigmatic, ill-defined, inenubilable, mysterial, mysterioso, mysterious

2. Involving oneself in secret plots or schemes.

   A book that does not sell us the powerful, intriguing women of Rome simply as poisoners, schemers, and femmes fatales […]

   2011, Annelise Freisenbruch, Caesars' Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire

3. archaicHaving clandestine or illicit intercourse.

   […] few respectable women will now sit at a window, looking into the public street, or gaze at passengers in any large town or city; and no one does so at present, unless an innocent inexperienced, husband-hunting, flirtish, or intriguing person.

   1839, Michael Ryan, Prostitution in London, page 83

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of intrigue

plural intriguings

1. datedAn intrigue.

   In all these negotiations, and caballings, and intriguings, the person most concerned, Frances Coke, the beauty and the heiress, was only the ball in the game.

   1909, Thomas Longueville, The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck