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''trenchant'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250714003956-00-⌔

trenchant - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

trenchant (comparative more trenchant, superlative most trenchant)

  • (chiefly archaic) Fitted to trench or cut; gutting; sharp.
    • ✤ The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,/For want of fighting was grown rusty,/And ate into itself, for lack/Of somebody to hew and hack.1
    • (zoology, of teeth) Adapted for tearing into flesh.
      • ✤ The trenchant talonid is a character of some miacids and distinguishes these teeth from the hyaenodontids and oxyaenids.2
  • (figuratively) Keen; biting; vigorously articulate and effective; severe.
    • ✤ * trenchant wit*
    • ✤ His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe.3
    • ✤ His trenchant criticisms of the Church’s repression […] include a discussion of the considerable 1938 success of the fledgling NODL in getting magazines removed from various points of sale.4

Etymology

Borrowed into Middle English from Old French trenchant, the present participle of trenchier (“to cut”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈtɹɛnʃənt/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1663, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part 1, canto 1: ↩

  2. 1971, Thomas H. V. Rich, Deltatheridia, Carnivora, and Condylarthra (Mammalia) of the Early Eocene, Paris Basin, France: ↩

  3. 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, pages 210–211: ↩

  4. 2011, Jay A. Gertzman, Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940: ↩

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