Melancholic vs Poignant - What's the difference?
melancholic | poignant |
Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
* Prior
A person who is habitually melancholy.
* {{quote-news, year=2008, date=March 16, author=Garrison Keillor, title=Woe Be Gone, work=New York Times
, passage=Kafka, Hart Crane, Jackson Pollock , Tennessee Williams , Mark Rothko , melancholics all, so why shouldn’t we accept our own bleakness and take long walks in the winter woods and look at the gnarled limbs of trees and struggle with the inscrutable and accept the beauty of permanent turmoil? }}
(obsolete, of a weapon etc) Sharp-pointed; keen.
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , VII:
Incisive; penetrating.
neat; eloquent; applicable; relevant.
Evoking strong mental sensation, to the point of distress; emotionally moving.
(figuratively, of a taste or smell) Piquant, pungent.
Piercing.
(dated, mostly British) Inducing sharp physical pain.
As adjectives the difference between melancholic and poignant
is that melancholic is filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature while poignant is (obsolete|of a weapon etc) sharp-pointed; keen.As a noun melancholic
is a person who is habitually melancholy.melancholic
English
Alternative forms
* melancholick (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- Just as the melancholic eye / Sees fleets and armies in the sky.
Noun
(en noun)citation
poignant
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- His siluer shield, now idle maisterlesse; / His poynant speare, that many made to bleed [...].
- His comments were poignant and witty.
- A poignant reply will garner more credence than hours of blown smoke.
- Flipping through his high school yearbook evoked many a poignant memory of yesteryear.