Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Characterized by a sensation of cutting, piercing, or stabbing.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Piercing; seeming to pierce or stab.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of lancinate.
  • adjective especially of pain Sharp, stabbing or piercing.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective painful as if caused by a sharp instrument

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From lancinate, to stab, from Latin lancināre, lancināt-, to lacerate.]

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Examples

  • The severe pain is described as lancinating, cutting, tearing, burning, boring and pressing.

    The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand Ray Vaughn Pierce 1877

  • It's that lancinating nerve pain that's often caused by trauma or some sort of injury or surgery.

    CNN Transcript Jun 17, 2009 2009

  • It's that lancinating nerve pain that's often caused by trauma or some sort of injury or surgery.

    CNN Transcript Jul 24, 2009 2009

  • It's that lancinating nerve pain that's often caused by trauma or some sort of injury or surgery.

    CNN Transcript Jun 17, 2009 2009

  • This particular doctor is a fancy Park Ave ID guy who had lots of patients with country homes, and so he listened to my story about the myoclonus and the lancinating pains and immediately diagnosed Lyme.

    Acrodermatitis Chronica Atrophicans 1 Dinosaur 2007

  • We have severe, lancinating, burning pain, that the strongest drugs in the world have a hard time treating.

    HealthCare Run Amuk 2006

  • There were crisp husks of beechmast and cast acorn cups underfoot in the russet slime of dead bracken where the rains of the equinox had so soaked the earth that the cold oozed up through the soles of the shoes, lancinating cold of the approaching winter that grips hold of your belly and squeezed it tight.

    Openings 2004

  • There were crisp husks of beechmast and cast acorn cups underfoot in the russet slime of dead bracken where the rains of the equinox had so soaked the earth that the cold oozed up through the soles of the shoes, lancinating cold of the approaching winter that grips hold of your belly and squeezed it tight.

    Archive 2004-12-01 2004

  • By the time he reached home he was conscious of feeling very ill: he had lancinating pains in his limbs, a chill down his spine, an outrageous temperature.

    Australia Felix 2003

  • Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions.

    Ulysses 2003

Comments

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  • "But a lancinating agony gnaws at my vitals." Gilbert Adair translation of Georges Perec's La Disparition

    August 11, 2010