trenchant

[ tren-chuhnt ]

adjective

1. incisive or keen, as language or a person; caustic; cutting:

   trenchant wit.

   Synonyms: acute, biting, sharp

2. vigorous; effective; energetic:

   a trenchant policy of political reform.

3. clearly or sharply defined; clear-cut; distinct.

trenchant

/ ˈtrɛntʃənt /

adjective

1. keen or incisive

   trenchant criticism

2. vigorous and effective

   a trenchant foreign policy

3. distinctly defined

   a trenchant outline

4. archaic.
   sharp

   a trenchant sword

Derived Forms

• ˈtrenchantly, adverb
• ˈtrenchancy, noun

Other Words From

• trenchan·cy noun
• trenchant·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of trenchant¹

1275–1325; Middle English tranchaunt < Anglo-French; Old French trenchant, present participle of trenchier to cut. See trench, -ant

Word History and Origins

Origin of trenchant¹

C14: from Old French trenchant cutting, from trenchier to cut; see trench

Example Sentences

Chapter 8 explores Jacobs' narrative "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" alongside Harper’s letters, poetry and speeches as among the most trenchant and still underexplored philosophical commentaries on how the United States might redress the systemic wrongs that conditioned the ideology of racial feudalism.

From Salon

Smith understood how her features cut into and through a role – wide eyes amply lidded, trenchant cheekbones, features that one might associate with snobbery.

From Salon

But a more trenchant quote for our times might come from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, written about a decade after Yeats’ poem: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

From Slate

“Insofar as people use The Power Broker as a guide to inform their own political values today, I think there is a risk of overextending its lessons. It makes no more sense to assume The Power Broker explains New York today any more than it would’ve for New Yorkers in the ’70s to think The Gangs of New York offered trenchant insights about Abe Beame.”

From Slate

In 1948, Gore Vidal published “The City and the Pillar,” about a gay man’s struggle to find companionship before and after World War II. In 1956, Baldwin published “Giovanni’s Room,” a trenchant tale of social pressures destroying a gay couple in postwar Paris.

From Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• acerbic
• biting
• caustic
• incisive
• mordant
• penetrating
• pointed
• pungent
• salient
• unsparing