Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Unpleasantly sharp, pungent, or bitter to the taste or smell. synonym: bitter.
- adjective Caustic in language or tone.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Sharp or biting to the tongue or integuments; bitterly pungent; irritating: as, acrid salts.
- Figuratively, severe; virulent; violent; stinging: as, “acrid temper,” Cowper, Charity.
- noun An acrid poison: as, “a powerful acrid,” Pereira, Mat. Med.
- noun One of a class of morbific substances supposed by the humorists to exist in the humors.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Sharp and harsh, or bitter and not, to the taste; pungent.
- adjective Causing heat and irritation; corrosive.
- adjective Caustic; bitter; bitterly irritating.
- adjective a poison which irritates, corrodes, or burns the parts to which it is applied.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Sharp and
harsh , orbitter and not to the taste;pungent . - adjective Causing
heat andirritation ;corrosive - adjective
Caustic ;bitter ; bitterly irritating
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective strong and sharp
- adjective harsh or corrosive in tone
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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This bacon tastes intensely smoky, the sort that comes only from long exposure to cool wood smoke, and not of meat soaked in acrid liquid smoke flavoring.
You gonna eat that? Random musings on food and life in Orange County, California » 2005 » March 2005
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This bacon tastes intensely smoky, the sort that comes only from long exposure to cool wood smoke, and not of meat soaked in acrid liquid smoke flavoring.
You gonna eat that? Random musings on food and life in Orange County, California » Mmm….. bacon 2005
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I hasten to spit it out, but all day my lips are still hot and acrid from the brief experiment.
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It was more a thing of his head than his heart, revealing itself mainly in short, acrid speeches, meant to be clever, and indubitably disagreeable.
Mary Marston George MacDonald 1864
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It's pronounced, as I'm sure you already knew, with the accent on the final 'a', not in a way to echo "acrid", though the second would be entirely suitable.
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The hesitancy, the moral doubt of her conversation with Langham, seemed to have vanished wholly in a kind of acrid self-assertion.
Robert Elsmere Humphry Ward 1885
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The hesitancy, the moral doubt of her conversation with Langham, seemed to have vanished wholly in a kind of acrid self-assertion.
Robert Elsmere Humphry Ward 1885
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Unfortunately, he offended Jerrold, by using the word "acrid" as applied to his writing, instead of some other word, which he could not think of at the moment.
The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne Frank Preston Stearns 1881
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I hesitated a little, but as he pressed me, and would have an answer, I said that I did not feel quite so sure of his kindly judgment on Thoreau's books; and it so chanced that I used the word "acrid" for lack of a better, in endeavoring to express my idea of Jerrold's way of looking at men and books.
Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 2. Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834
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I hesitated a little, but as he pressed me, and would have an answer, I said that I did not feel quite so sure of his kindly judgment on Thoreau's books; and it so chanced that I used the word "acrid" for lack of a better, in endeavoring to express my idea of Jerrold's way of looking at men and books.
Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834
oroboros commented on the word acrid
ACrID
April 24, 2008