poignant
/ˈpɔɪ.njənt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.27 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
adj
Evoking strong mental sensation, to the point of distress; emotionally moving.
adj
Example Sentences
- "His siluer shield, now idle maisterlesse; / His poynant speare, that many made to bleed [...]."
- "A poignant reply will garner more credence than hours of blown smoke."
- "Flipping through his high school yearbook evoked many a poignant memory of yesteryear."
- "The shabby chest of drawers was spread with a lace cover, and set out with a few gold-topped boxes and bottles, a rose-coloured pin-cushion, a glass tray strewn with tortoise-shell hair[-]pins—he shrank from the poignant intimacy of these trifles, and from the blank surface of the toilet-mirror above them."
- "A particularly poignant example of this is a child called Genie (see Curtiss 1977; Rymer 1993), who was deprived of speech input and kept locked up on her own in a room until age thirteen. When eventually taken into care and exposed to intensive language input, her vocabulary grew enormously, but her syntax never developed."
- "Sad Derek attracted more than 50 comments praising him for his poignant views[…]"
Etymology
From Middle English poynaunt, poynant, borrowed from Anglo-Norman puignant, poynaunt etc., present participle of poindre (“to prick”), from Latin pungō (“prick”). Doublet of pungent.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *pewǵ-, poynaunt, puignant, pungō
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpɔɪ.njənt/
- British English: /ˈpɔɪ.njənt/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more poignant (comparative)
most poignant (superlative)