To tempt someone means to try to persuade them to do something, especially something they might know they shouldn't do, by making it seem attractive or appealing. When you're on a diet and someone offers you a slice of chocolate cake, they're tempting you. When you've promised yourself to finish your homework before playing video games, but your friend texts asking if you want to play right now, that's a temptation.

The word often carries the sense of an internal struggle. You know what you should do, but something else looks more fun, easier, or more satisfying in the moment. A temptation is whatever is doing the tempting: that cake, that game, that shortcut.

Tempt can also mean simply to entice or attract without any negative sense. A sunny day might tempt you to go outside and play. A fascinating book might tempt you to stay up past bedtime reading just one more chapter.

The phrase tempting fate means taking an unnecessary risk, like bragging that you never get sick right before flu season starts. When someone says “don't tempt me,” they mean “don't make that appealing thing even more attractive, because I'm already struggling not to give in!”