whet

Etymology

From Middle English whetten, from Old English hwettan (“to whet, sharpen, incite, encourage”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwattjan, from Proto-Germanic *hwatjaną (“to incite, sharpen”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷeh₁d- (“sharp”). Cognate with Dutch wetten (“to whet, sharpen”), German wetzen (“to whet, sharpen”), Icelandic hvetja (“to whet, encourage, catalyze”), dialectal Danish hvæde (“to whet”).

verb

1. (transitive) To hone or rub on with some substance, as a piece of stone, for the purpose of sharpening – see whetstone.
2. (transitive) To stimulate or make more keen.
   to whet one's appetite or one's courage
   My faith in vegetarianism grew on me from day to day. Salt's book whetted my appetite for dietetic studies. I went in for all books available on vegetarianism and read them. 1925-29, Mahadev Desai (translator), M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I, chapter xv
   In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing. October 9, 2003, Naomi Wolf, “The Porn Myth”, in New York Magazine
3. (transitive, obsolete) To preen.

noun

1. The act of whetting something.
2. That which whets or sharpens; especially, an appetizer.
   To make a nice Whet before Dinner […] 1769, Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English Housekeeper
   A really good game, to my mind, must have an element, however slight, of physical danger to the player. This is the great whet to skilled performance. 1902, Robert Marshall Grade, The Haunted Major