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say it: TREN-chuhnt
trenchant is an adjective meaning "having keenness and forcefulness and penetration in thought, expression, or intellect". It carries 3 recorded senses.
having keenness and forcefulness and penetration in thought, expression, or intellect
“searching insights”
“trenchant criticism”
characterized by or full of force and vigor
“a hard-hitting expose”
“a trenchant argument”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for trenchant come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.