The quality of being sharp-tongued, bitter, or cutting in speech; harshness or severity in manner or words.
From Latin dicacitas, from dicax (sharp-tongued, biting), from dicere (to say). The word entered English through Latin borrowings describing rhetorical sharpness and came to mean personal acerbity.
Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers loved this word—it described the witty insults that were prized in court, but over time it lost favor as people stopped celebrating cruelty dressed up as cleverness.
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