What's the difference between prurient and titillating?

Prurient


Definition:

  • (a.) Uneasy with desire; itching; especially, having a lascivious curiosity or propensity; lustful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Miller is suing the NoW's parent company, News Group, and Mulcaire, accusing them of breaching her privacy and of harassing her "solely for the commercial purpose of profiting from obtaining private information about her and to satisfy the prurient curiosity of members of the public regarding the private life of a well-known individual".
  • (2) Writing about Tulsa in The Photobook Volume 1 , authors Martin Parr and Gerry Badger say that the "incessant focus on the sleazy aspect of the lives portrayed, to the exclusion of almost anything else – whether photographed from the 'inside' or not – raises concerns about exploitation and drawing the viewer into a prurient, voyeuristic relationship with the work."
  • (3) There is nothing to prevent a judge from clearing a court while a potential line of questioning is explored, thus ensuring that such prurient details are not reported, often a major factor in the humiliation of a witness.
  • (4) It did not confuse public interest with a prurient interest by the public.
  • (5) The moralising strand will now have the chance to indulge in prurient probing of Mr Gingrich's personal life, while the populist faction interrogates Mr Romney's asset-stripping past.
  • (6) Now let's have fewer prurient questions about how they feel, and more probing questions about what they think – which ought to be what this election is about.
  • (7) In the Mail, which routinely prints a lot of very readable but prurient smut throughout its middle pages, it appeared as "w*****".
  • (8) Whether Vaz stays or goes, we must not let prurient interest in his personal life derail this precious moment – this chance for sex workers in the UK to live a life free from fear and stigma.
  • (9) The health scare ran wild on Twitter but journalists were frustrated by officials who called their thirst for information prurient and "un-African."
  • (10) All of the prurient details of the recent disgraceful case, where a 21-year-old was convicted and given a three-month suspended sentence for taking abortion pills she bought online, have been documented in this newspaper and others, some even going so far as to suggest a 10- to 12-week foetus is a “baby boy”.
  • (11) Zac Goldsmith, a multimillionaire MP, spoke for the first time about his decision to take out an injunction, arguing that they were necessary because, he said, some newspapers were unwilling "to distinguish between what is in the public interest and what is merely of prurient interest to some of the public".
  • (12) The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith earlier called for parliament to pass a privacy law , arguing that some newspapers could not distinguish between the public interest and "what is merely of prurient interest to the public".
  • (13) Mr Letterman rarely offers anything approaching the threat that Mr Cameron might face in a Jeremy Paxman interview or if he ventured on to a studio sofa with a prurient UK host like Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand.
  • (14) I am not going to pretend that I looked at the online Muamba images with the pure dispassion of a cultural commentator: there is a prurient, ghoulish human instinct to know what the worst moments of life might look like.
  • (15) When the Dean of Jersey, the Very Rev Robert Key, held a service after the skull was found, it included the words: "From over-inquisitiveness, false sensationalism and prurient curiosity, good Lord, deliver us."
  • (16) Margaret Corvid : ‘Prurient interest must not derail the chance for sex workers to live free from fear and stigma’ I’m no fan of Keith Vaz, but when I read that he’d been accused of hiring male sex workers, I knew that defending him isn’t about him – it’s about our right as sex workers to work without threat of violence and arrest.
  • (17) Miller is suing News Group, the subsidiary that publishes the News of the World, and Mulcaire, accusing them of breaching her privacy and of harassing her "solely for the commercial purpose of profiting from obtaining private information about her and to satisfy the prurient curiosity of members of the public regarding the private life of a well-known individual".
  • (18) In January, the website Grantland (which is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures , a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company ) published an article – ostensibly about the inventor of a golf putter – that resulted in a prurient quest to uncover the subject's trans status, and which may have contributed to the article's subject's suicide.
  • (19) Zac Goldsmith, who has called for a privacy law, says that it is needed because some newspapers blur the lines between genuine public interest and "what is merely of prurient interest".
  • (20) The prurient nature of the questioning led its authors to conclude that some Home Office caseworkers were "fixated on sexual practice rather than sexual identity".

Titillating


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Titillate

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "It was a certain kind of titillation the shop offered," the critic Matthew Collings has written, "sexual but also hopeless, destructive, foolish, funny, sad."
  • (2) But even when these titillating accounts touch on real concerns, they do not really reflect the great mass of everyday teenage social behaviour: the online chat, the texting, the surfing, and the emergence of a new teenage sphere that is conducted digitally.
  • (3) As a result, the segment was edited in order to obscure any inappropriate detail and it was felt that the overall effect was comedic rather than titillating."
  • (4) In a 2014 article about the first season, Slate’s J Bryan Lowder wrote : “Straight critics and viewers seeking liberal cred will find an easy tool here; Looking is, after all, gay without any of the hard parts (dick included), gay that’s polite and comfortable and maybe a little titillating but definitely not all up in your face about it.” The week’s best new TV: Looking, BoJack Horseman and Vikings Read more Despite the brickbats, Looking was renewed for a second season, and matured into a layered portrait of contemporary gay friendships and relationships.
  • (5) The coming out, or in some cases outing, of male celebrities certainly exists, and does result in media attention – Tom Daley and Wentworth Miller – but the angle of coverage is not titillation or surprise.
  • (6) It doesn't bother me that men will watch to be titillated, as it's part of life.
  • (7) I know your readers may find it titillating but it's depressing to keep talking about it".
  • (8) The "titillating details" of the "sordid affairs" of the Anna Nicole saga "enticed" Bahamians and changed the face of the island's politics, two confidential memos sent by the embassy in Nassau reveal.
  • (9) We don't yet have the " feelies ", Huxley's cinemas in Brave New World – where the cinema spectator is titillated by the images and by what sounds like a vibrating seat.
  • (10) And while it's true that gridiron jocks can't seem to perform unless interrupted every 10 seconds by schmaltzy corporations peddling their wares, brass bands booming across the pitch and cheerleaders wiggling and jiggling like wind-up titillators, it's also true that American spectators do at least get what they're promised - it may take five hours but eventually they will see 60 minutes of football.
  • (11) To me it wasn't titillating, sensationalist, or even entertaining, but in terms of the way female servants were treated by those above and below stairs, it was accurate: many were raped, mistreated or subjected to abuse.
  • (12) There is a titillating investment in framing women as covertly aggressive.
  • (13) At the same time, the cable adds, the "titillating details of Anna Nicole's sordid affairs have enticed the Bahamian public to give renewed focus to government indiscretions".
  • (14) In the end perhaps the most spectacularly titillating moment of Liverpool's day in the high court came right at the beginning with news that the divorced Jordan and Peter Andre were scheduled to appear simultaneously in the court next door.
  • (15) When the Victoria's Secret Bond Street store opened there were rumours that upscale labels on the street didn't like the brand "lowering the tone", but there is nothing remotely titillating about the Victoria's Secret shopping experience.
  • (16) Through such words, Powell won votes and titillated white British fears of people with different coloured skins.
  • (17) You could argue this isn't as titillating as onstage megalomania or animatronic twerking.
  • (18) He had heard Hitler speak and was titillated by the aesthetics and sexuality of Nazism.
  • (19) By merely changing the antebellum language, the reactions could be recycled into our current tabloid newspapers and titillating TV programs as if the tragedy occurred yesterday.
  • (20) Set in Japan - and utterly unlike the predictable movie confection of bath-house titillation and exploding aluminium - Fleming's novel has the reclusive villain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, make himself over as benefactor to the suicidally inclined and terminally ill who come to the garden to fade over and out amid toxic blossoms.

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