EPIGRAM

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does epigram mean? 

• EPIGRAM (noun)
  The noun EPIGRAM has 1 sense:

1. a witty saying

  Familiarity information: EPIGRAM used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EPIGRAM (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A witty saying

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

epigram; quip

Hypernyms ("epigram" is a kind of...):

expression; locution; saying (a word or phrase that particular people use in particular situations)

Derivation:

epigrammatic (terse and witty and like a maxim)

 Context examples 

And I could see Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging in a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself of oracular and pessimistic epigrams.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Reading the works of men who had arrived, he noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the tricks by which they had been achieved—the tricks of narrative, of exposition, of style, the points of view, the contrasts, the epigrams; and of all these he made lists for study.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Brutality I had experienced, but it was the brutality of the intellect—the cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth, the cruel epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the fellows at the Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some of the professors during my undergraduate days.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Arthur and Norman, he found, believed in evolution and had read Spencer, though it did not seem to have made any vital impression upon them, while the young fellow with the glasses and the mop of hair, Will Olney, sneered disagreeably at Spencer and repeated the epigram, There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)