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pointy

UK/ˈpɔɪnti/US/ˈpɔɪnti/
adjectiveB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — point sits at #203leans spokeninformal · an editor’s judgement

Pointy means narrowing to a sharp tip. Shoes, hats, teeth, ears.

It is the informal and slightly childish version of pointed, which is why it suits describing a witch's hat or a dog's ears and would look odd in a technical document. Fashion uses it for shoes constantly. There is a fine British compound in pointy-headed, borrowed from American political insult, meaning an intellectual who is clever and useless. Tapering is the formal word for the same shape.

Definitions of pointy

  1. 1adjectivepointyNarrowing to a sharp point.B2

    “He was wearing extremely pointy shoes.”

Also accepted in games: pointed

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    poynt

  2. English

    point

  3. English, today

    pointy

Built from

  • pungō · Latin — to prick, punch

From point + -y. point comes from Middle English poynt. From Middle English poynt, from Old French point (“dot; minute amount”), from Latin pūnctum (“a hole punched in; a point, puncture”), substantive use of pūnctus, perfect passive participle of pungō (“to prick, punch”); alternatively, from Old French pointe (“sharp tip”), from Latin pūnctus, all from Proto-Italic pungō (“to sting, prick”). Mostly displaced native Middle English ord (“point”), from Old English ord (“point”). a doublet of pointe and ponto and puncto and punctum and punt and punto.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 8 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

pointy in the wild

  • Christmas elves are usually depicted as green- or red-clad, with large, pointy ears and wearing pointy hats.

    Christmas elf

  • The episode's title refers to the sword fighting lesson that Jon gave to Arya Stark before their farewell: "Stick them with the pointy end".

    The Pointy End

  • The shorter stack is named Little Pinnacle (or The Haystack) and the taller, more pointy stack is named simply The Pinnacle.

    The Pinnacles (Dorset)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pungō family

point

pointy — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others