Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A short, witty poem expressing a single thought or observation.
  • noun A concise, clever, often paradoxical statement.
  • noun Epigrammatic discourse or expression.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Gr. lit., a poetical inscription placed upon a tomb or public monument, as upon the face of a temple or public arch.
  • noun Hence In a restricted sense, a short poem or piece in verse, which has only one subject, and finishes by a witty or ingenious turn of thought; hence, in a general sense, an interesting thought represented happily in a few words, whether verse or prose; a pointed or antithetical saying.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A short poem treating concisely and pointedly of a single thought or event. The modern epigram is so contrived as to surprise the reader with a witticism or ingenious turn of thought, and is often satirical in character.
  • noun An effusion of wit; a bright thought tersely and sharply expressed, whether in verse or prose.
  • noun The style of the epigram.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete An inscription in stone.
  • noun A brief but witty saying.
  • noun A short, witty or pithy poem.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a witty saying

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French epigramme, from Latin epigramma, from Greek, from epigraphein, to mark the surface, inscribe : epi-, epi- + graphein, to write; see gerbh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin epigramma, from Ancient Greek ἐπίγραμμα (epigramma) "inscription".

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Examples

  • To see the name of John Milton, the great religious and political polemicist, attached to such a bawdy epigram, is extremely surprising to say the least.

    John Lundberg: Scholar Unearths a Dirty Milton Poem John Lundberg 2010

  • To see the name of John Milton, the great religious and political polemicist, attached to such a bawdy epigram, is extremely surprising to say the least.

    John Lundberg: Scholar Unearths a Dirty Milton Poem John Lundberg 2010

  • To see the name of John Milton, the great religious and political polemicist, attached to such a bawdy epigram, is extremely surprising to say the least.

    John Lundberg: Scholar Unearths a Dirty Milton Poem John Lundberg 2010

  • The rhetorical flourish of a Latin epigram also has served to indicate that the notion of proof is well understood, and commonly agreed.

    Proof M-mv 2005

  • With its converse insight into the modality of romantic apostasy, this volatile epigram is nothing less than the fulcrum with which we can gain sufficient purchase to negotiate the critical conversions of Coleridgean recantation, from the odes of the 1790s through the desultory journalism of the 1800s and 1810s to the "Logosophia" of 1817 and after.

    The Multeity of Coleridgean Apostasy 1999

  • [2] A slang epigram puts it better: The time, the place, and the girl.

    The Foundations of Personality 1921

  • Latin epigrammatist who left a large mass of work, gave a meaning to the word epigram from which it is only now beginning to recover.

    Latin Literature 1902

  • The Latin epigram says, Mors mortis morti mortem nisi morte tu lisset, AEternae vitae janua clausa foret.

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 1871

  • _ What you call epigram gives life and spirit to grave works, and seems principally wanted to relieve a long poem.

    Imaginary Conversations and Poems A Selection Walter Savage Landor 1819

  • The epigram are a number of the sentences turned into verse.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12: Philip II-Reuss 1840-1916 1913

Comments

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  • "If, with the literate, I am

    Impelled to try an epigram,

    I never seek to take the credit;

    We all assume that Oscar said it."

    - Dorothy Parker.

    November 7, 2008

  • Oscar Wilde, noted witticist, I presume?

    November 10, 2008

  • That was my impression too.

    November 10, 2008

  • Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

    October 5, 2010