Find the word definition

Crossword clues for pungency

The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pungency

Pungency \Pun"gen*cy\, n. The quality or state of being pungent or piercing; keenness; sharpness; piquancy; as, the pungency of ammonia. ``The pungency of menaces.''
--Hammond.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
pungency

1640s, from pungent + -cy.

Wiktionary
pungency

n. 1 The state of being pungent. 2 A foul odor.

WordNet
pungency
  1. n. wit having a sharp and caustic quality; "he commented with typical pungency"; "the bite of satire" [syn: bite]

  2. a strong odor or taste property; "the pungency of mustard"; "the sulfurous bite of garlic"; "the sharpness of strange spices" [syn: bite, sharpness]

Wikipedia
Pungency

Pungency is the condition of having a strong, sharp smell or taste that is often so strong that it is unpleasant. Pungency is the technical term used by scientists to refer to the characteristic of food commonly referred to as spiciness or hotness and sometimes heat, which is found in foods such as chili peppers.

The term piquancy is sometimes applied to foods with a lower degree of pungency that are "agreeably stimulating to the palate." Examples of piquant food include mustard and some strongly flavored tomatoes, as well as most foods that might be called "well-spiced."

Usage examples of "pungency".

He had only to nibble a corner of Chevrotin, sometimes only inhale the pungency of Brie, when his bowels would churn and boil and begin venting.

At the same moment down came three or four bottles from the chiffonnier and shot a web of pungency into the air of the room.

Its forelimbs were powerful with dagger-curved claws, and now that it was wounded Pouncer could smell the tangy metallic pungency of its blood.

Indian spikenard and the stinging pungency of myrrh, opoponax ,and ihlang-ylang.

She could hear the stream flowing behind the riprap wall and smell the inimitable pungency of charcoal lighter fluid mixed with animal fat.

James had been city-born and -bred, and the stench of a warm day near the tanneries and dyers, or the pungency of the cattle pens and poultry yards, was taken for granted, fading into the background so that it went mostly unnoticed.

The familiarity of the room engulfed her, the scrubbed boards still smelling of lye and carbolic, the faint echo of vinegar, the heat of the stove, and over near the tables the pungency of whiskey and the sharper clean tang of herbs.

He ran water in the sink and washed and scrubbed and washed, until he no longer smelled the gunpowder on his hands, only the pungency of the soap and astringents.

He ran wate in the sink and washed and scrubbed and washed, until no longer smelled the gunpowder on his hands, only pungency of the soap and astringents.

The climate of the humid rain forest served to magnify the pungency of its body odor, which unavoidably reeked of previously ingested flesh.

But just at that moment Cedric was obviously working something else off because the familiar pungency rose from him even above the billowings from the pipe.

It was clean, solid, healthy, joyous, inexhaustible girl, all clovery oils and pungencies, long limber waist and torso sophisticating the rhythmic counterpoint of solid, heated, thirsty hips, creating somehow along with release the small awarenesses of new hunger soon to rebuild.

Just as when you set about preparing the balmy liquid of sweet marjoram and myrrh and the flower of spikenard which gives forth to the nostrils a scent like nectar, before all you should seek, so far as you may and can find it, the substance of scentless oil, such as gives out no perfume to the nostrils, that it may as little as possible meddle with and destroy by its own pungency the odours mixed in its body and boiled up with it.

A file flashed through his mind, all of Katya's preferences and pungencies, all of the ways she moved and whispered, her small guidances and encouragements and the many happy little bits of erotic filigree she superimposed upon a very basic act.

A file flashed through his mind, all of Katya’s preferences and pungencies, all of the ways she moved and whispered, her small guidances and encouragements and the many happy little bits of erotic filigree she superimposed upon a very basic act.