incisive

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“
Each word was incisive, and seemed to cut slightly like falling steel from those soft, warm lips.

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Definitions (16)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. adjective Penetrating, clear, and sharp, as in operation or expression: an incisive mind; incisive comments.
  2. Syntax Note
    Synonyms: incisive, trenchant, biting, cutting, crisp
    These adjectives refer to keenness and forcefulness of thought, expression, or intellect. Incisive and trenchant suggest penetration to the heart of a subject and clear, sharp, and vigorous expression: an incisive report; trenchant wit.
    Biting and cutting often have a sarcastic or sardonic quality capable of wounding or stinging: "Biting remarks revealed her attitude of contempt” (D.H. Lawrence). "He can say the driest, most cutting things in the quietest of tones” (Charlotte Brontë).
    Crisp suggests clarity, conciseness, and briskness: a crisp retort.

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Examples (50)

  • Your comments were always incisive, and your humor was always entertaining. —  Blog updates
  • Disturbing and incisive, the Academy Awardr-winner Taxi To The Dark Side incorporates rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons into its exposure of the Bush administration's "global war on terror." —  Torrentreactor.Net
  • The lines may be raunchy, but they're also consistently sharp, incisive, and witty. —  High-Def Digest: All High-Def Disc News
  • Learn how you can help the Mackinac Center provide incisive, accurate and timely analysis of critical policy issues. —  Mackinac Center Commentaries
  • Uncovered through a series of illuminating, incisive, and often surprising close readings, these connections give us a new, more complex appraisal of the relationship between literacy, social status, and political power in a time and place in which various languages competed for cultural sovereignty-at a critical juncture in the cultural history of the West. —  AvaxHome RSS:
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

concise ·  trenchant ·  terse ·  pithy ·  caustic ·  lucid ·  penetrate ·  insightful ·  satirical ·  persuasive ·  business-like ·  racy
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 Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French incisif = Provencal incisiu = Spanish Portuguese Italian incisivo, from Latin as if *incisivus, from incidere, past participle incisus, cut into: see incide, incise.
 

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/ɪnˈsaɪsɪv/
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