Meaning
To stimulate interest or desire so that someone wants more of something. Originally said of hunger and food, it now mostly concerns curiosity, anticipation or enthusiasm, as when a preview, sample or first taste leaves an audience eager for the main event; standard in reviews, marketing and everyday speech. Neutral to positive in tone, and standard only with 'whet'; 'wet your appetite' is regarded as an error. Regional use: General English.
Origin
'Whet' is an Old English verb meaning to sharpen, as a blade on a whetstone; Merriam-Webster notes that its figurative senses, to make keen or to incite, go back at least to the fifteenth century, so sharpening an appetite was available long before the phrase became fixed. Early examples collected by The Phrase Finder include Dekker's play of 1612 ('seekes new wayes to whet dull appetite') and Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia of 1688 ('Let's whett; bring some Wine'). The Times of May 1801, arguing that defending Portugal would only whet Bonaparte's appetite, shows the phrase applied to appetites other than hunger, which became the norm through the nineteenth century. The expression is often mangled as 'wet your appetite', an eggcorn reinforced by the older and unrelated 'wet your whistle', recorded in the Towneley Mysteries of 1386, and by the facts that whetstones needed water and that Georgian hosts literally served drinks to sharpen guests' appetites before dinner.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- wet your appetite (common eggcorn)
- whet someone's appetite
- whet the appetite
- whet your appetite for something
- whetted my appetite
Usage Examples
- The gallery's free lecture series is designed to whet your appetite for the full exhibition.
- That two-minute trailer whetted my appetite so effectively that I booked opening-night tickets.
- A summer apprenticeship whet her appetite for cabinetmaking, and she enrolled in the two-year course the following autumn.