Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or having the nature of an epigram.
- adj. Containing or given to the use of epigrams.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Dealing in epigrams; speaking or writing in epigram: as, an epigrammatic poet.
- Suitable to epigrams; belonging to epigrams; having the quality of an epigram; antithetical; pointed: as, epigrammatic style or wit.
Wiktionary
- adj. having the characteristics of an epigram
- adj. containing or using epigrams
GNU Webster's 1913
- Writing epigrams; dealing in epigrams.
- Suitable to epigrams; belonging to epigrams; like an epigram; pointed; piquant.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. terse and witty and like a maxim
Etymologies
- Latin epigrammaticus, from Greek epigramma, epigrammat-, epigram; see epigram. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Heretofore Biblical writers have given to us battles, laws, histories, songs; now we have in Solomon's writings a new style in short, epigrammatic sentences.”
“But it is an elegy with no tears, only a clear-headed acknowledgment that, in the novel's most famous epigrammatic nugget of wisdom, "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
The Wall Street Journal: A Lyric, Elegiac Lament for a Lost World
“He was quite as able to be terse and memorable when in conversation and, like Oscar Wilde (who was, like him, disconcertingly vast when seen at close quarters), seems seldom to have been off duty when it came to the epigrammatic and aphoristic.”
“This is the deeper meaning behind the epigrammatic phrase of the novel and film--"Who is John Galt?”
The Huffington Post: Michael Shermer: Atlas Shrugged, But You Shouldn't
“If I had Bill Bryson's wit and epigrammatic suavity and his ability to make each datum ripple seamlessly into the next.”
“She was herself a humorist -- writing entertaining light verses -- and a vivacious talker 'uniting,' it was said, 'strong common sense with a lively imagination' and a crisp epigrammatic phrase ....”
“The rhythmically taut, epigrammatic libretto by WH Auden and Chester Kallman makes tongue-twisting demands.”
The Guardian: The Rake's Progress; BBC Prom 35; Three Choirs festival
“Those of us who love Maureen Dowd for the metaphysical conceits of her epigrammatic Swiftian op-eds feel itchy and uncomfortable with the intensification of this electronic gross-out contest.”
The Huffington Post: Giles Slade: Sarah Palin for President: Kathy Griffin for Pope
“They record his suave, erudite, epigrammatic peregrinations around Oxfordshire and Berkshire as the world economic collapse of that year took place around him.”
“Goethe embodied many of the contending strands in art over the next century: his work could be lushly emotional, and rigorously formal, brief and epigrammatic, and epic.”
March « 2008 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘epigrammatic’.
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Writing
graphoanalysis, agraphia, agraphic, anorthography, logagraphia, cipher, code, inscribe, penmanship, cursive, Palmer method, calligraphy and 100 more...
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SCIE - Be the first...
... to use these words in spoken English and reap esteem. In the SPOKEN corpus of the COCA (full corpus: 450 million words) none of these occur.
stochastic, disputant, state-led, almshouse, exceptionality, bibliographical, t-test, z-score, personal/social, neoplastic, stroma, ludic and 288 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1901 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 941 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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My GRE word list
polemic, ad hominem, fallacious, comity, paucity, contrite, prosaic, veracious, laconic, pugnacious, alacrity, gregarious and 176 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
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Short in Length
Words meaning short in longitude.
abbreviate, curt, aphoristic, concise, condensed, curtailed, terse, epigrammatic, brief, laconic, sententious
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joelhardin's Words
kitsch, desertification, serendipitous, myriad, rakish, ethereal, legerdemain, extempore, rubric, tubercular, superfluous, miasma and 21 more...
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pinkmerengue's Words
impecunious, hoyden, effete, wrangle, vertiginous, obfuscate, elegiac, crepuscular, corporeal, liminal, perfidious, runcible and 33 more...
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Short 'n Sweet
And not so sweet.
short and sweet, pithy, laconic, concise, brief, compact, curt, brass tacks, epigrammatic, short, pointed, honed and 31 more...
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