riveting
Britishadjective
Explanation
A rivet is a fastener that holds something closed or down, and something riveting keeps you glued to your seat and grabs your attention. Sometimes a movie is so riveting that not even free popcorn refills can lure you away. Riveting is an adjective for things that really draw you in, like a book you read in one sitting or a song you turn up so you can hear every lyric. Beautiful scenes are riveting, but terrible and ugly things are also riveting, like the site of an accident you can't stop looking at. Words from a teacher or actor have a riveting effect when they're full of impact and interest, and when you exaggerate a story for your best friend, that's riveting too.
Vocabulary lists containing riveting
100 SAT words Beginning with "R"
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Front Desk
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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.
Was there any doubt that this absurdly riveting bad blood showdown could do anything but take it to the brink, like it had in Vancouver 2010, or even Boston a year ago?
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 22, 2026
The action turned as riveting as watching a toddler try to pull on mittens and boots.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 26, 2026
A new generation of independent filmmakers in India is making "riveting, viable cinema" instead of "mass entertainers," Ms Choudhary points out.
From BBC • Jan. 2, 2026
Full of industry anecdotes and sobering analyses, the book is a riveting introduction to the corporate culture of artificial intelligence and its designs on all of us.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 22, 2025
The children had always found the antics of small, edible creatures positively riveting and could scarcely take their eyes off them—clearly an advantage when bird.watching—but whether they could refrain from pouncing remained to be seen.
From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood
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.
