poignant

comparative more poignant · superlative most poignant

1. obsoleteusuallySharp-pointed; keen.

   His siluer shield, now idle maisterlesse; / His poynant speare, that many made to bleed [...].

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

2. Neat; eloquent; applicable; relevant.

   A poignant reply will garner more credence than hours of blown smoke.

3. Evoking strong mental sensation, to the point of distress; emotionally moving.

   Flipping through his high school yearbook evoked many a poignant memory of yesteryear.

   4 more examples

   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.

   1905, Edith Wharton, chapter XIV, in The House of Mirth, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, book II, page 528

   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.

   2004, Andrew Radford, Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, §1.4, page 13

   Sad Derek attracted more than 50 comments praising him for his poignant views[…]

   2006 October 19, Wee Shu Min, Response to Derek Wee's blog

   Hanks shepherds the young girl to safety – first brusquely, and then with a sudden outburst of affection made all the more poignant for the way it is reserved previously. He once again reminds us, quite literally, that he is in many ways the ultimate dad.

   2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC

   Synonyms: distressing, moving

4. figurativelytastePiquant, pungent.
5. figurativelywordIncisive; penetrating; piercing.

   His comments were poignant and witty.

6. UKdatedInducing sharp physical pain.