Definition of "frisson" []

• A moment of intense excitement; a shudder: The story's ending arouses a frisson of terror. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I think you can have male friends but the frisson is always there."
• "But what gives the novel its considerable frisson is the intrusion of Peter's impossibly seductive, much younger brother-in-law."
• "It's the casual conversation of people who know one another well, charged with the certain frisson of two men who have lately spent more time in one another's company than they would normally wish."