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What is "poignant"

Crossword clues for poignant

poignant
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
poignant
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a poignant reminder (=making you feel sad)
▪ I see Kathy's death as a poignant reminder that we sometimes really are powerless.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
more
▪ His writings were sharpened and made more poignant by his troubles.
▪ Autumn, with its gold and red, makes the passing of time even more poignant.
most
▪ Certainly, the most poignant part of Mr Wright's history is the fate of the Cherokees.
▪ The differences between rich and poor are perhaps most significant, most visible, and most poignant in the lives of chil-dren.
▪ One of the most poignant studies is of a graceful ten-year-old girl who drowned a few years later in a Mississippi boating accident.
particularly
▪ Nothing: that's a particularly poignant kind of pain.
▪ For a visitor from Boston, this show is particularly poignant.
▪ The setting might appear incongruous but it can also be seen as being particularly poignant.
▪ There was a particularly poignant one from the United States.
▪ Anna's end is particularly poignant because there is a continuous theme of death throughout the book.
▪ For them it was a particularly poignant one.
▪ Delivery performance is particularly poignant and assumes a high visibility.
▪ The plan, beautifully drawn and lettered, as are all the plans of this period, is particularly poignant.
■ NOUN
moment
▪ Portraits of young men in uniform, many of whom never returned, make a poignant moment in most twentieth-century family collections.
reminder
▪ Somehow it was a poignant reminder that the eternal things do not change.
▪ Yesterday's report from Body Shop was a poignant reminder of the fate that can await highly-rated companies.
▪ Surely it is a poignant reminder of the capacity of the human being to suffer mental anguish.
story
▪ It is a poignant story this, and an unnerving one.
▪ Several months after we first met, she tells me a revealing and poignant story of her first day at college.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a poignant love story
▪ In a poignant moment, Richter interrupted his speech to thank his mother and father.
▪ This is one of her most beautiful and poignant works.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And in this case there is a poignant link between the two.
▪ Everything became too poignant for us, for both of us.
▪ It was a poignant film, which she wished had been longer.
▪ Lanchbery uses Chopin's poignant Andante Spinato to express Natalia's realisation that love has now escaped her.
▪ Santiago has crafted a poignant tale that celebrates the human spirit and the triumph of will.
▪ Several months after we first met, she tells me a revealing and poignant story of her first day at college.
▪ The poignant music drifted into the coffee-house, and Meredith settled back on the Victorian chair to enjoy it and her surroundings.
▪ The fact that the Grimkes came of notable Southern Huguenot stock made their case especially poignant.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Poignant

Poignant \Poign"ant\, a. [F., p. pr. of poindre to sting, fr. L. pungere to prick, sting. See Pungent.]

  1. Pricking; piercing; sharp; pungent. ``His poignant spear.''
    --Spenser. ``Poynaunt sauce.''
    --Chaucer.

  2. Fig.: Pointed; keen; satirical.

    His wit . . . became more lively and poignant.
    --Sir W. Scott.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
poignant

late 14c., "painful to physical or mental feeling" (of sauce, spice, wine as well as things that affect the feelings), from Old French poignant "sharp, pointed" (13c.), present participle of poindre "to prick, sting," from Latin pungere "to prick" (see pungent). Related: Poignantly.\n

\nThe word disguises a linguistics trick-play, a double reverse. Latin pungere is from the same root as Latin pugnus "fist," and represents a metathesis of -n- and -g- that later was reversed in French.

Wiktionary
poignant

a. 1 (context obsolete of a weapon etc English) sharp-pointed; keen. 2 incisive; penetrating. 3 neat; eloquent; applicable; relevant. 4 Evoking strong mental sensation, to the point of distress; emotionally moving. 5 (context figuratively of a taste or smell English) piquant, pungent. 6 (context figuratively of a look, or of words English) piercing. 7 (context dated mostly British English) induce sharp physical pain.

WordNet
poignant

  1. adj. arousing affect; "the homecoming of the released hostages was an affecting scene"; "poignant grief cannot endure forever"; "his gratitude was simple and touching" [syn: affecting, touching]

  2. keenly distressing to the mind or feelings; "poignant anxiety"

Usage examples of "poignant".

Pbilae, my own beloved dahabeeyah, but it recalled poignant memories of that never-to-be forgotten voyage I could not restrain a sigh when we took our leave, and Emerson glanced questionirigly at me.

Tremors, born within me that day when old gray, bristling Leggett, our Principal, opened the schoolroom door upon Lucy Tait, are as poignant, as sweetly terrible, now as in that far time when the light of her wondrous presence first fell upon me.

She greeted him with a mocking, enigmatic smile in which was a poignant gaiety.

This was as though every poignant experience of her past had been rolled into one, raised to the nth power, and stabbed relentlessly into the deepest, tenderest, most sensitive centers of her being.

It appeared to be the only remaining trace of the HQ, and to George at least there was a poignant touch obout this.

She submitted a poignant petition to the Court of Oyer and Terminer, not on her own behalf but rather for the others whom she believed innocent.

Mary Viner, his Mary Viner, quick of breath and quick of colour, his Beloved of the poignant mouth.

What chiefly lives in it are certain poignant phrases, certain eloquent bars, a glowing, winey bit of color here, a velvety phrase for the oboe or the clarinet, a sharp, brassy, pricking horn-call, a dreamy, wandering melody for the voice there.

Beset by a grief so poignant that methought I must die of it, sat I in my chamber overlooking King Street.

Western fascination with punishment and redemption be a poignant attempt to make sense of perinatal Stage 2?

Touched to tears by the unnamed loss that raged through him, he trembled, his emotion resharpened to unblunted potency, and his grief, too poignant to bear.

They looked for him everywhere when they came out, but he had vanished, and they were left with a regret which, if unavailing, was not too poignant.

Man and underman, they faced each other with a kindness and gratitude which was so poignant as to be very close to grief.

Hazard smiled at the vivid imagery, warmed by the poignant memories of his growing up time, when this land was Absarokee land.

Ernest Bloch that is a large, a poignant, an authentic expression of what is racial in the Jew.