poignant.
Sharp-pointed; keen.
Meaning & usage
Sharp-pointed; keen.
Neat; eloquent; applicable; relevant.
A poignant reply will garner more credence than hours of blown smoke.
Evoking strong mental sensation, to the point of distress; emotionally moving.
Flipping through his high school yearbook evoked many a poignant memory of yesteryear.
Piquant, pungent.
Incisive; penetrating; piercing.
His comments were poignant and witty.
Inducing sharp physical pain.
Where this word comes from
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.
Try it on your idea.
poignant has 8 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA word with a source.
Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.