POIGNANT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does poignant mean? 

• POIGNANT (adjective)
  The adjective POIGNANT has 2 senses:

1. arousing affect

2. keenly distressing to the mind or feelings

  Familiarity information: POIGNANT used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• POIGNANT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Arousing affect

Synonyms:

affecting; poignant; touching

Context example:

his gratitude was simple and touching

Similar:

moving (arousing or capable of arousing deep emotion)

Derivation:

poignancy (a quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Keenly distressing to the mind or feelings

Context example:

poignant anxiety

Similar:

painful (causing physical or psychological pain)

Derivation:

poignance; poignancy (a state of deeply felt distress or sorrow)

 Context examples 

The fire of him was no longer warm, and the fear of him was no longer poignant.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He shook his head sadly, and with a look of poignant regret on his face.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Pray, Emma, said he, may I ask in what lay the great amusement, the poignant sting of the last word given to you and Miss Fairfax?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

All the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept alive within my breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that the life was unendurable.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Nothing bitter—nothing poignant?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was of a much less poignant nature than what the others excited; but Sir Thomas was considering his happiness as very deeply involved in the offence of his sister and friend; cut off by it, as he must be, from the woman whom he had been pursuing with undoubted attachment and strong probability of success; and who, in everything but this despicable brother, would have been so eligible a connexion.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

And there, as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections and acknowledgements, and especially in those explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

She was stronger alone, and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)