poignant
POIN-yuntadjMeaning deeply moving; stirring sadness or tender regret
Memory hook POIGN-ant: POINTS straight at the heart. Two old friends meet again on the platform where they said goodbye sixty years before, and the moment points straight at your heart. It is poignant.
Grandpa’s poignant letter to his younger self made the whole family cry.
In context The film’s last scene was poignant: the two friends, now old men, met again at the very station where they had said goodbye sixty years before.
Similar moving, touching, affecting, tender
Opposite unmoving, trivial
From Old French poignant, “pricking,” from Latin pungere, “to prick,” the root of pungent.