acerbic

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Beatrice Arthur, best known as the acerbic Maude Findlay on Norman Lear's television sitcom

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Definitions (6)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. adjective Sour or bitter tasting; acid. See Synonyms at bitter.
  2. adjective Sharp or biting, as in character or expression: "At times, the playwright allows an acerbic tone to pierce through otherwise arid or flowery prose” (Alvin Klein).

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Examples (50)

  • ‘I used to play it with my father Ah.’ The sound was acerbic, and I remembered too late that she had had no such childhood lessons, and that she played her own kind of chess with her father—with her image of him, in any case. —  The Historian
  • Then I returned to the microfilm room and checked out a few reels containing the coverage in the Berkeley Barb —an acerbic, muckraking paper that had achieved national prominence in the sixties. —  Muller, Marcia - [14] Wolf in the shadows
  • Lucy's eyes popped open in shock as an acerbic, and all too familiar, voice rang out. —  Teresa Medeiros - Thief of Hearts
  • The economist and former labour secretary, Robert Reich, and the Columbia University scholar Joseph Stiglitz are equally acerbic (see Edward Luce, "America's liberals lay into Obama", Financial Times, 27 March 2009). —  open Democracy News Analysis - Comments
  • Pratchett has talked frankly and movingly about his recent diagnosis with Alzheimer's disease, but Unseen Academicals shows no diminution of his talents nor softening of his acerbic, anarchic humour.
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From Latin acerbus; see ak- in Indo-European roots.
 

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/æˈsərbɪk/
by American Heritage

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