sharpness

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Fine cutting edge or point

Nouns

1. sharpness, acuity, acumination; spinosity.

2. (small pointed item) point, spike, spine, spiculum; needle, pin; prick, prickle; spur, rowel; barb, barbed wire; spit, cusp; horn, antler; snag, thorn, briar, bramble, thistle; bristle; tine, prong; nib, tooth, tusk, fang; spoke, cog, ratchet. See drugs.

3. (pointed building or natural object) crag, crest, arête, cone, peak, sugarloaf, pike; spire, pyramid, steeple.

4. (pointed implement) wedge; knife, blade, edge, point, steel, carving knife; snickersnee; dagger, poniard, dirk, bodkin, stiletto; jackknife; scalpel, lancet; cutting edge, blade, razor; probe; plowshare; hatchet, ax, pickax, mattock, pick, adz, bill; billhook, cleaver, slicer, cutter; scythe, sickle, scissors, shears; sword (see arms); perforator; saw; iron maiden. Slang, shiv, toothpick, shank. See arms, angularity.

5. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone, steel; abrasive.

Verbs — be sharp, have a point; bristle with; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate, set, strop, grind; cut (see disjunction).

Adjectives — sharp, keen, cutting; acute, acicular, aciform; aculeate[d], acuminated; pointed; tapering; conical, pyramidal; spiked, spiky, ensiform, peaked, salient; cusped, cuspidate, cornute; prickly, spiny, spinous; thorny; bristling; studded; thistly, briary; craggy, rough, snaggy; digitated, two-edged, fusiform; dentiform; toothed, odontoid; starlike, stellate; arrow-headed; arrowy, barbed, spurred; cutting; sharp-edged, knife-edged; sharpened.

Quotations — How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child (Shakespeare), A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it (Rabindranath Tagore), Satire should, like a polished razor keen, wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu).

Antonyms, see bluntness.

II

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun A cutting quality: bite, edge, incisiveness, keenness, sting. See SHARP.