Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of poignancy
First recorded in 1680–90; poign(ant) + -ancy
Explanation
The noun poignancy refers to something that is deeply touching, especially something that brings forth strong emotions like sympathy, sadness, or sorrow. The poignancy of the movie may bring you to tears. Bring tissues. Lots of tissues. The noun poignancy is from the Old French word poindre, which means "to prick or sting." Related words include the adjective poignant. Similar words include pathos and bathos, although both of these words often imply a sort artificiality that poignancy does not. Pathos can imply a trick by the writer or speaker to produce sympathy or sadness and bathos can imply artificial sentimentality, so poignancy is often the preferred word when genuine emotion is involved.
Vocabulary lists containing poignancy
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Burrows would himself be the victim of a helicopter crash over Laos in 1971, bringing renewed interest and poignancy to this photograph.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
Seven years later, revisiting the poem has carried an added poignancy.
From BBC ● Jun. 9, 2026
Her lyrical descriptions bring fresh poignancy to well-worn scenes of exile, though her narrative slackens a little on foreign terrain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
There’s a grandfather quality to Kani’s Sam, but the increase in years has only deepened the play’s poignancy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2026
With poignancy, Sissy realized that he was growing up.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
He's looking forward to next season, where he plans to delve more deeply in the character, probing "her pain and poignancies."
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2015
Steele-Perkins is good at little poignancies, the tell-tale details that give the game away, that point out our common fallibilities.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 16, 2010
What is left is an abundant supply of jokes together with jarring poignancies.
From Time Magazine Archive
McGinley began to find her own voice and to extol the pleasures and poignancies of the hearth, Memorial Day parades, the smell of charcoal grills, the damp loafers on the lawn.
From Time Magazine Archive
He had, of course, grown ashamed of such confiding fancies, and as he had become more confident had shoved away, with stout, determined fingers, those dim memories, poignancies, regrets.
From The Golden Scarecrow by Walpole, Hugh, Sir
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
