What's the difference between poignant and wistful?

Poignant


Definition:

  • (a.) Pricking; piercing; sharp; pungent.
  • (a.) Fig.: Pointed; keen; satirical.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Totò was a legend in the Vesuvian city – a comedian of genius; poignant, mysterious.
  • (2) Fleeting though it may have been (he jetted off to New York this morning and is due in Toronto on Saturday), there was a poignant reason for his appearance: he was here to play a tribute set to Frankie Knuckles, the Godfather of house and one of Morales's closest friends, who died suddenly in March.
  • (3) One of the most poignant exchanges came when Tony was asked by @ juliangratton to sum up the last seven years of his life.
  • (4) The exercise yard is adorned with poignant children's paintings in response to school trips here.
  • (5) This double bind may be particularly poignant for grandparents in single mother families.
  • (6) This addition was particularly poignant as Andrew Jackson’s legacy includes the decision to sign the Indian Removal Act of 1830 , which gave the federal government power to expel Native American tribes from their land.
  • (7) This poignant letter, addressing Recep Tayyip Erdogan and written by one of the protesters in Istanbul's historic Taksim Square , was widely circulated on Turkey's social media.
  • (8) Treasure Island gives us an intense sense of place, and a poignant coming-of-age story full of moral ambiguity.
  • (9) Their songs ranged from the almost unbearably poignant ("Hand in Glove") to the frankly vulnerable ("How Soon is Now").
  • (10) The image of the France midfielder walking, head bowed, past the World Cup trophy is one of the more poignant in football history.
  • (11) The second series of BBC1’s hit drama Happy Valley ended on Tuesday night , bowing out in a wondrous blaze of confrontation, perceptive resolution and poignant revelation.
  • (12) Ed Miliband said: "This is a tragic and poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by our armed forces in serving our country with bravery and distinction."
  • (13) But the American author, already the recipient of the Man Booker International prize, the Pulitzer and the National Book award , said it was "particularly poignant for me to have gotten news of the award only a few weeks after the death of Carlos Fuentes, who received the award in 1994".
  • (14) A picture sits on each one of the chairs, decorated by poignant letters, orange flowers and gifts.
  • (15) Or perhaps we could focus on the relationship of Leia and Solo, now married, and there could be a heart-rendingly poignant study of their elderly existence together, rather like Michael Haneke's Amour , but set in space.
  • (16) Dern, all windblown white hair and stubble, is often entirely silent and withdrawn, and all the more compelling and poignant for that.
  • (17) On the basis of this limited but poignant experience, we propose an outline of steps in management to help others avoid similar problems.
  • (18) Yet the narratives in Benefits Street have a human and poignant quality, often presenting decent and compassionate people disenfranchised by an unfair society.
  • (19) Sandy Nairne, director of the NPG, said: "The Van Dyck self-portrait is a poignant portrait of great significance.
  • (20) It was poignant, afterwards, to hear Martínez try to put the human element into some perspective.

Wistful


Definition:

  • (a.) Longing; wishful; desirous.
  • (a.) Full of thought; eagerly attentive; meditative; musing; pensive; contemplative.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) One radio critic described Jacobs' late night Sunday show as a "tidying-up time, a time for wistfulness, melancholy, a recognition that there were once great things and great feelings in this world.
  • (2) I can't pull an invisibility cloak over my house – nor would I wish to," she said, a little wistfully, as if she really wished she had Harry Potter's magic powers.
  • (3) The age-courses of concentrations of reduced (GSH) and oxidized (GSSG) glutathione, of GSH synthesizing enzyme activities, of glutathione S-transferase (GST), of GSSG-reductase (GR) and of biliary GSH and GSSG export were measured in livers from male Uje:WIST rats.
  • (4) – but Russell happily slips in and out of voices and lines from the movie, his recollections punctuated by wistful sighs.
  • (5) The former Internazionale owner Massimo Moratti has been staring wistfully into the distance and wonder what might have been if he had not dished his dosh on the Special One rather than mere players.
  • (6) Shareholders may be forgiven for thinking wistfully of the £55 which Pfizer offered to pay for each of their shiny shares.
  • (7) Jeremy Corbyn still speaks about it wistfully – a rally in Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket that turned into one of the most emotional moments of his leadership campaign.
  • (8) Softness and tenderness, wistful ironies” he conceded as blindspots, describing Motown as mere “foot fodder” but having a lot of time for relatively minor practitioners such as Joe Tex , who he saw as “hugely smug” but with “great charm and inventiveness”.
  • (9) Every now and then I get wistful for when I was just a consumer of games because I can never have that back, but fortunately the love of the work is strong enough that I’m okay with that, and I’ve played so many life-changing games because I’m seeking them through the lens of a developer.
  • (10) The antiarrhythmic effects and pharmacodynamics of tobanum were evaluated in 28 patients wist paroxysms of reciprocal atrioventricular tachycardia, by using transesophageal cardiac pacing.
  • (11) After the jet-black high school satire Heathers pulled the rug out from under John Hughes and his oversharing Brat Pack, in 1989, American adolescents were left with few offerings, most of them wistful odes to another age – either stylistically, as with the overblown, pirate-radio-themed Christian Slater vehicle Pump Up the Volume; or quite literally, in the case of Richard Linklater’s nostalgia-fuelled 70s pastiche, Dazed and Confused.
  • (12) We are sitting in a boardroom on the seventh floor of the new Birmingham library , the glass walls allowing us a view of a city draped in mist, a sharp contrast to the "paradise" of Swat, with its tall mountains and clear rivers which Malala recalls wistfully.
  • (13) "Oh, it was lovely," said the retired factory worker, 61, as he smiled wistfully in the bright sunshine.
  • (14) The subjects (N = 30) were grouped into high and low levels of thought dysfunction, as measured by the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST).
  • (15) Recently an individually administered instrument (WIST) was introduced as a brief, objective, and quantitative measure of schizophrenic thought processes.
  • (16) There's one aspect of his former life he misses: "The sweat," he sighs wistfully.
  • (17) [Small Talk thinks back wistfully to a time when ice creams were bigger, Liverpool were challenging for the league, Glenn Medeiros was top of the charts…] So you caught the cycling bug?
  • (18) Ss were administered a conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional or biconditional rule learning task, WIST, and Shipley-Hartford Memory Scale.
  • (19) It is now possible to separate wistful thinking from reality.
  • (20) It was with a mixture of wistfulness and his usual forthright bullishness that Sam Allardyce, briefly moving his attention away from the 21st-century football that West Ham United intend to confront Chelsea with on Friday afternoon, looked back eight years and contemplated what he might have achieved in his final season at Bolton Wanderers if he had received greater financial backing – or, to be precise, any financial backing – when his team were hovering around the Champions League places at Christmas.