arresting
Americanadjective
-
attracting or capable of attracting attention or interest; striking.
an arresting smile.
-
making or having made an arrest.
the arresting officer.
adjective
Other Word Forms
- arrestingly adverb
- nonarresting adjective
- unarresting adjective
Etymology
Origin of arresting
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The Metropolitan Police has said it will resume arresting protesters for supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action.
From BBC • Mar. 26, 2026
Alaniz, the court has allowed local officials in Texas to remain immune from prosecution for arresting a journalist who published information she received from a government official.
From Slate • Mar. 26, 2026
His best-known series of sculptures, “Future Relics,” is visually arresting, featuring crumbling, ruin-like replicas of everyday objects including cameras, phones and CD players.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026
Here was a film trying so hard to convince the audience of its highbrowness that it lost the genuinely arresting effect these smaller-tier Hoover adaptations have by simply being honest with the audience.
From Salon • Mar. 19, 2026
While physicists in the middle decades of the twentieth-century were looking perplexedly into the world of the very small, astronomers were finding no less arresting an incompleteness of understanding in the universe at large.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
