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:
The gag-filled comedy overflows with wackiness, as is customary for “Looney Tunes,” but also, and perhaps less expectedly, poignancy galore.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
There is a poignancy that Sir Billy departed soon after her.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
Then there’s the slow, somber poignancy of Hawk’s final aria, in which he recognizes the impossibility of the relationship, and paves the way to betrayal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
Scarlet’s final encounter with Claudius radiates with the complicated poignancy expected of real, difficult catharsis.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 6, 2026
The puzzlement in having to make sense of this abstract philosophical conundrum mingles with the poignancy of having to come to terms with the loss of someone we love.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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
In the process it displays the grandest theatrical techniques, affirms the Tightness of love and friendship, revives pleasures and poignancies that have all but vanished from modern narrative art.
From Time Magazine Archive
Charles Sturridge's pretty film version, though, sees these subtle poignancies as placards, something to smash over his characters' empty heads as he sings, "Let's all be beastly to the British."
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 Sir Hugh Walpole
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.
