poignant

Etymology

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.

adj

1. (obsolete, of a weapon, etc.) Sharp-pointed; keen.
2. Neat; eloquent; applicable; relevant.
   A poignant reply will garner more credence than hours of blown smoke.
3. Evoking strong mental sensation, to the point of distress; emotionally moving.
   Flipping through his high school yearbook evoked many a poignant memory of yesteryear.
   A particularly poignant example of this is a child called Genie (see Curtiss 1977; Rymer 1993), who was deprived of speech input and kept locked up on her own in a room until age thirteen. When eventually taken into care and exposed to intensive language input, her vocabulary grew enormously, but her syntax never developed. 2004, Andrew Radford, Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, §1.4, page 13
   Hanks shepherds the young girl to safety – first brusquely, and then with a sudden outburst of affection made all the more poignant for the way it is reserved previously. He once again reminds us, quite literally, that he is in many ways the ultimate dad. February 9 2021, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC
4. (figurative, of a smell, taste) Piquant, pungent.
5. (figurative, of a look, word) Incisive; penetrating; piercing.
   His comments were poignant and witty.
6. (chiefly Britain, dated) Inducing sharp physical pain.