acerbic

adjective

acer·bic ə-ˈsər-bik

Synonyms of acerbic next

: sharply or bitingly critical, sarcastic, or ironic in temper, mood, or tone

acerbic commentary

an acerbic reviewer

acerbically

ə-ˈsər-bi-k(ə-)lē

adverb

Did you know?

English speakers created acerbic in the 19th century by adding -ic to the adjective acerb. Acerb had been around since the 17th century, but for most of that time it had been used only to describe foods with a sour taste. (Acerb is still around today, but now it's simply a less common synonym of acerbic.) Acerbic and acerb ultimately come from the Latin adjective acerbus, which can mean "harsh" or "unpleasant." Another English word that comes from acerbus is exacerbate, which means "to make more violent or severe."

Examples of acerbic in a Sentence

Whitney has graced magazine covers for her acerbic and blunt evisceration of the banks she has covered. Several weeks ago, she left her well-paid post at Oppenheimer to start her own economic consultancy, where she will charge many of her employer's clients for her own unambiguous analysis. —

Zachary Karabell, Newsweek, 9 Mar. 2009

… we probably have no choice but to enjoy Private Lives on its own terms—as a play that exults in its total lack of a public dimension. Coward's acerbic wit, his submerged sensibility, and his clipped semantics actually had a profound influence on the styles of virtually all the English dramatists who followed him … —

Robert Brustein, New Republic, 10 June 2002

… discovery of self-esteem and New Agey conclusions ("I discovered there was a goddess deep inside me") are something that an acerbic comedian like Cho shouldn't embrace without irony. —

Publishers Weekly, 7 May 2001

We want to experience how someone as acerbic as Jane Austen, as morally passionate as Dostoyevsky, as psychologically astute as Henry James makes sense of the chaos of this world. —

Laura Miller, New York Times Book Review, 15 Mar. 1998

the film's most acerbic critics whispered a steady stream of acerbic comments as the lecturer droned on

Recent Examples on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

The writing across all of these works is vivid, acerbic, unflinching. —

Negar Azimi, The New Yorker, 12 Dec. 2024 Well, multi-hyphenate artist Cole Escola plays Mary Todd Lincoln as an acerbic alcoholic who cares way more about achieving a career as a cabaret singer than whether her husband (Conrad Ricamora) wins the ongoing Civil War. —

Ew Staff, EW.com, 11 Dec. 2024 The backlash against Thompson spread across social media, from TikTok to Twitter, LinkedIn to Bluesky — typically acerbic jokes about the poster’s empathy being out of network or that Thompson’s claim to sympathy had been denied. —

Aja Romano, Vox, 7 Dec. 2024 Who could forget Peter Graves’ fish-eating pilot, Barbara Billingsley’s jive-talkin’ passenger, Robert Stack’s acerbic military vet or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s slow-boiling co-pilot?- Oh wait, that was Roger Murdock (wink-wink). —

Erik Pedersen, Deadline, 26 Nov. 2024 See all Example Sentences for acerbic