- caustic
- caustic, mordant, acrid, scathing are comparable when they mean stingingly incisive.Caustic usually implies a biting wit, a ready tongue or pen, and the power to drive disagreeable truths home{
"I really do not know what to do with my books," he said, and looked round for sympathy. "Why not read them?" said a . . . caustic Fellow opposite— Benson
}Mordant is not always clearly distinguishable from caustic. In distinctive use it suggests perhaps greater blighting power or deadlier effectiveness in the thrusts of wit{the mordant humor of G. B. Shaw
}{the mordant things you try to say to listeners, cruelties invariably regarded as merely gently whimsical— Edman
}Acrid adds to caustic the implications of bitterness and, often, malevolence{most satirists are indeed a public scourge .... Their acrid temper turns ... the milk of their good purpose all to curd— Cowper
}{an acrid denunciation of the use of the House floor to broadcast falsehoods— Roy
}Scathing retains its basic implication of injuring chiefly in its suggestion of a deliberate intent to scorch or blister. It seldom implies, as the other words of this group often imply, insensitiveness or maliciousness, and it often connotes both righteous indignation and fierce and withering severity{scathing satire
}{a scathing exposure of graft
}{young Wendell Phillips, aristocratic, handsome, ironical, scathing, bitter . . . with the bitterness of a man in anguish— Sandburg
}Analogous words: biting, cutting, *incisive, trenchant: *bitter: *sharp, keen, acute: *sarcastic, satiric, ironicAntonyms: genial
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
