Membean is an incredibly effective way to learn words and permanently remember them.
Learn more on how we help for
Test Prep,
Personal Learning,
or get it for your
School.
The word abject emphasizes a very bad situation or quality, thereby making it even worse.
A bereaved person is someone whose close friend or relative has recently died.
The adjective blithe indicates that someone does something casually or in a carefree fashion without much concern for the end result; as a result, they are happy and lighthearted.
Someone in a buoyant mood is in good spirits.
A convivial atmosphere or occasion is friendly, pleasant, cheerful, and relaxed.
If you are despondent, you are extremely unhappy because you are in an unpleasant situation that you do not think will improve.
Something that is dolorous, such as music or news, causes mental pain and sorrow because it itself is full of grief and sorrow.
Someone who is dour is serious, stubborn, and unfriendly; they can also be gloomy.
Someone who is ebullient is filled with enthusiasm, very happy, and extremely excited about something.
An effervescent individual is lively, very happy, and enthusiastic.
If you exult, you show great pleasure and excitement, especially about something you have achieved.
If someone is lugubrious, they are looking very sad or gloomy.
If you are melancholy, you look and feel sad.
Someone who is morose is unhappy, bad-tempered, and unwilling to talk very much.
If you are pensive, you are deeply thoughtful, often in a sad and/or serious way.
A plaintive sound or voice expresses sadness.
Plangent sounds are loud and tend to suggest sadness.
If you are sanguine about a situation, especially a difficult one, you are confident and cheerful that everything will work out the way you want it to.
Someone who is saturnine is looking miserable and sad, sometimes in a threatening or unfriendly way.
Someone who is woebegone is very sad and filled with grief.
Adj.
poignant
POIN-yuhnt
Context
My friend Liana gave a poignant or touching speech at graduation, reflecting on the challenging school year. Her poignant or moving descriptions of her struggles during the pandemic saddened me. Though her poignant or emotional words made many of us cry, she ended her speech with hope. Her poignant or deeply affecting message reminded us that we overcame the year’s obstacles—now we can do anything.
Quiz:Try again!
When is something poignant?
When it is described in a few carefully chosen words.
When it creates a lasting feeling of accomplishment.
GnatPoint The year we finally arrived at the summit after our very long and difficult hike, we were disappointed to see that it was a point filled with swarming stinging gnats, which made the summit unbearable to stand upon; this poignantgnatpoint upset us greatly because we had spent so much time and effort getting there!
Examples
There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.
— Logan Pearsall Smith, American-British Essayist
This year, that shared joy takes on a more poignant meaning. "It feels really good to be able to give this to people," Coleman says. "This year feels even more rewarding than any other year, because it has just been such a bummer," Santoro concurs. "A tree and a smile mean more now."
—
NPR
For others, the pandemic has forced a deeper rethink of what is and isn’t important, from communal gatherings to ritual greetings. Whether these individual aspirations and insights are profound or poignant, all are deeply human impulses grounded in the sense of disruption that an unusual year in world history has wrought.
—
The Christian Science Monitor
Someone who has a poignant experience is “pierced” or “pricked” by emotion.
Word Theater
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial A poignant scene at the end of the movie shows how sad Elliot and E.T. feel about leaving each other.
The panel shows a small video clip of either the word in actual use or a scene that represents the meaning of a word. This not only breaks up the monotony of studying words but also provides another avenue to strengthen word meaning. Enjoy!
