(n.) Sourness of taste, with bitterness and astringency, like that of unripe fruit.
(n.) Harshness, bitterness, or severity; as, acerbity of temper, of language, of pain.
Example Sentences:
(1) Early on he wrote in a wide variety of outlets (including twice in the Guardian ), but his acerbic takes on the national security state have earned him a regular column at the paleocon mothership, the American Conservative.
(2) Lewis, 42, admitted he was "hugely embarrassed" after McKellen, 74, who plays the wizard Gandalf in the Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit films, responsed acerbically in the Radio Times.
(3) Scottish Ballet: The Nutcracker In recent years, Christmas at Scottish Ballet has been defined by Ashley Page’s witty, acerbic re-writes of the 19th century classics.
(4) In contrast, he returned to the mainstream in Robert Redford's factually based Quiz Show (1994), as the acerbic father to a fraudulent game-show contestant.
(5) Jess Phillips, Labour MP for the Birmingham Yardley, has already posted an acerbic tweet.
(6) He was a man of contradictions: he was a romantic, but also an acerbic and difficult character.
(7) Other work in the show recalls Soviet-era propaganda posters, and twists political slogans to acerbic effect.
(8) The acerbic correspondence of Jones and Briffa with Michael Mann of Penn State University , the chief creator of the hockey stick graph, is a central feature of the emails.
(9) The result is a show whose rapid-paced, ultra-acerbic dialogue is as funny as anything on television at the moment.
(10) And we will address it.” The Vermont senator urged attendees to “join me in this campaign to build a future that works for all of us, and not just the few on top.” Although the acerbic left-winger is a political veteran, this will be his first Democratic primary.
(11) Mark Gardner, Community Security Trust On Holocaust Memorial Day 2013, the Sunday Times ran a cartoon by its famously acerbic cartoonist, Gerald Scarfe, that depicts Binyamin Netanyahu using blood to cement a wall that he is building, that has parts of bodies trapped within it.
(12) His acerbic former adviser Dominic Cummings , long loathed by David Cameron (the feeling is mutual), is the campaign director.
(13) His acerbic wit and combative manner can ruffle feathers.
(14) The acerbic comments from the official Xinhua news agency come after Clinton, while on an official visit to Africa , appeared to question China's motives in the region.
(15) It received a warm reception in the House of Lords, though one peer commented acerbically that Adonis’s predecessor, Ruth Kelly, had just two years earlier called such a project “opportunistic, economically illiterate and hugely damaging to Britain’s national interests”.
(16) Angela Eagle The chair of the Labour national policy forum and shadow leader of the house has an acerbic wit capable of putting most Tory ministers on the back foot.
(17) Erdoğan’s acerbic response on Monday suggested the EU’s concerns were justified.
(18) Or rather, she was a sort of ultra-acerbic clown: an outlandishly dressed and painted pixie-harpy, who said whatever she liked.
(19) "As the wonderfully acerbic Anne Robinson said, 'The viewers don't want to watch ugly.'"
(20) The hashtag #Clapper on Twitter is filled with acerbic tweets mocking the "least untruthful" line.
Austereness
Definition:
(n.) Harshness or astringent sourness to the taste; acerbity.
(n.) Severity; strictness; austerity.
Example Sentences:
(1) Since the start of this week, markets have been more cautious, with bond yields in Spain reaching their highest levels in four months on Tuesday amid concern about the scale of the austerity measures being imposed by the government and fears that the country might need a bailout.
(2) In a separate exclusive interview , Alexis Tsipras, the increasingly powerful 37-year-old Greek politician now regarded by many as holding the future of the euro in his hands, told the Guardian that he was determined "to stop the experiment" with austerity policies imposed by Germany.
(3) He campaigned for a no vote and won handsomely, backed by more than 61%, before performing a striking U-turn on Thursday night, re-tabling the same austerity terms he had campaigned to defeat and which the voters rejected.
(4) But that promise was beginning to startle the markets, which admire Monti’s appetite for austerity and fear the free spending and anti-European views of some Italian politicians.
(5) Cable argued that the additional £30bn austerity proposed by the chancellor after 2015 went beyond the joint coalition commitment to eradicate the structural part of the UK's current budget deficit – the part of non-investment spending that will not disappear even when the economy has fully emerged from the recession of 2008-09.
(6) All of the parties have been trying to use Greece to their advantage.” On Monday, the governing People’s party pointed to the referendum to justify their decision to impose austerity measures during the height of the economic crisis.
(7) Greece sincerely had no intention of clashing with its partners, Varoufakis insisted, but the logic of austerity was such that policies conducted in its embrace could only fail.
(8) As Greece pleads with its eurozone creditors for more time in meeting its fiscal adjustment targets, Dombrovskis is a fierce champion of surgical austerity applied quickly and ruthlessly.
(9) Updated at 12.23pm BST 12.04pm BST As Mariano Rajoy and François Hollande prepare to reveal their austerity budgets (Spain goes on Thursday and France on Friday), they might be forgiven for casting an envious eye towards Australia where government statisticians revealed that the country is A$325bn (£200bn) better off than they'd thought.
(10) This proposal is a purely partisan move that will backfire on the government disastrously.” The Green party accused Osborne of making “efforts to limit the democratic scrutiny of his austerity agenda”.
(11) The budget red book contained a chart which suggested that the rich were indeed facing a bigger hit than anyone else, and Liberal Democrats were today pointing to this to justify the austerity package.
(12) "But if public opposition to further austerity measures hardens, the Greek government could find it even tougher to put the public finances back on a sustainable footing."
(13) The austerity programmes administered by western governments in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis were, of course, intended as a remedy, a tough but necessary course of treatment to relieve the symptoms of debts and deficits and to cure recession.
(14) In the midst of this catastrophe, the troika is insisting on further austerity to achieve massive primary budget surpluses of 3% in 2015, 4.5% in 2016 and even more in future years.
(15) In a Europe (including Britain) where austerity has become the economic dogma of the elite in spite of massive evidence that it is choking growth and worsening the very sickness it claims to heal, there are plenty of rational, sensible arguments for taking to the streets.
(16) The Attlee government was toppled by peacetime austerity that voters no longer trusted.
(17) After heading for Rome with his long-term partner, Howard Auster, he returned to fiction with a bestselling novel, Julian, based on the life of a late Roman emperor; a political novel, Washington DC, based on his own family; and Myra Breckinridge, a subversive satire that examined contradictions of gender and sexuality with enough comic brio to become a worldwide bestseller.
(18) Yesterday, John McDonnell spelled out the new Labour leadership’s public investment-driven economic alternative to austerity.
(19) Then Greece has another chance.” But the intervention by the IMF will undermine EU leaders who argue Greece must submit to a fresh round of austerity measures to release funds for debt repayments.
(20) The IMF itself came under fire after it admitted in its World Economic Outlook report that officials had underestimated the effects of austerity measures on economic growth.