''intrigue'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904120411-00-⌔

intrigue - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

intrigue (countable and uncountable, plural intrigues)

• A complicated or clandestine plot or scheme intended to affect some purpose by secret artifice; conspiracy; stratagem; the practice of engaging in hidden schemes.
  • ✤ Synonym: machination
  • ✤ His betrayal was the beginning of a complex intrigue intended to give him control of the company.
  • ✤ […] lost in such a jungle of intrigues, pettifoggings, treacheries, diplomacies domestic and foreign […]¹
  • Clandestine intercourse between persons; illicit intimacy; a liaison or affair.
    • ✤ I suspect Suzanne and her mysterious friend of being involved in an intrigue.
    • ✤ I often used to smile at a young Ensign of the Guards, who always popped [pawned] his sword and watch when he wanted cash for an intrigue; […]²
    • ✤ Morality at Delli is at as low an ebb as in the far interior of Brazil, and crimes are connived at which would entail infamy and criminal prosecution in Europe. While I was there it was generally asserted and believed in the place, that two officers had poisoned the husbands of women with whom they were carrying on intrigues, and with whom they immediately cohabited on the death of their rivals.³
    • ✤ He proposed to call witnesses to show how the prisoner, a profligate and spendthrift, had been at the end of his financial tether, and had also been carrying on an intrigue with a certain Mrs. Raikes, a neighbouring farmer’s wife.⁴
    • ✤ In 1679 and 1680 there were persistent rumors of an intrigue between Mary, Lady Grey, and the Duke of Monmouth.⁵
  • The plot of a play, poem or romance; the series of complications in which a writer involves their imaginary characters.
    • ✤ The story’s intrigue was boring and reminiscent of a thousand better movies.
• A desire to understand something; interest or fascination.
  • ✤ Your idea has aroused my intrigue.

Verb

intrigue (third-person singular simple present intrigues, present participle intriguing, simple past and past participle intrigued)

• (intransitive) To conceive or carry out a secret plan intended to harm; to form a plot or scheme.
• (transitive) To arouse the interest of; to fascinate.
  • ✤ Scenic illusions such as those caused by the haze, or the apparent diminution of scale where everything was enormous, intrigued Dutton.⁶
  • ✤ These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story. And, on top of all that, they are ornaments; they entice and intrigue and sometimes delight.⁷
• (intransitive) To have clandestine or illicit intercourse.
• (transitive) To fill with artifice and duplicity; to complicate.
  • ✤ And as wililye as thoſe ſhrewes that beguyle hym haue holpe hym to inuolue and intryke the matter: I ſhall vſe ſo playn and open a way therin, that euery man ſhall well ſee the trouth.⁸
  • ✤ How doth it[sin] perplex and intrigue the whole course of your lives!⁹

Etymology

Borrowed from French intrigue, from Italian intricare, from Latin intrīcō (“to entangle, perplex, embarrass”). Doublet of intricate.

Pronunciation

• (noun) enPR: ĭn’trēg, IPA: /ˈɪntɹiːɡ/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (verb) enPR: ĭntrēg’, IPA: /ɪnˈtɹiːɡ/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• Rhymes: -iːɡ

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

1. 1858–1865, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volume, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC: ↩

2. 1773, The Westminster Magazine, Or, The Pantheon of Taste: ↩

3. 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 309: ↩

4. 1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 152: ↩

5. 1976, John Harold Wilson, Court Satires of the Restoration, page 245: ↩

6. 1954, Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 170: ↩

7. 2012 March, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 19 February 2013, page 106: ↩

8. 1533 (date written), Thomas More, “The Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance […]. Chapter XVIJ.”, in Wyllyam Rastell [i.e., William Rastell], editor, The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, […], London: […] Iohn Cawod, Iohn Waly, and Richarde Tottell, published 30 April 1557, →OCLC, page 1004, column 2: ↩

9. c. 1681, John Scott, The Christian Life from Its Beginning to Its Consummation in Glory […]: ↩