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Foreign it's the Word of the Day podcast for August 29th. Today's Word is incisive. Spelled I N C I S I V E. Incisive is an adjective. It means impressively direct and decisive. It's generally applied to either something communicated in a way that is very clear and direct, or to a person who is able to explain difficult ideas clearly and confidently. Here's the word used in a sentence from the Boston Globe Death becomes her might be a combination of an uproarious camp sensibility and the grotesquely macabre, but it also contains incisive social critiques of impossible beauty standards for women, the difficulties of aging, and the lengths people will go to maintain their youthful looks. An incisive person doesn't hem and haw. They get straight to the point. The original meaning of the word incisive from around 1600 was having a cutting edge or piercing point. The modern meaning of impressively direct and decisive has been part of English since the mid-1800s. Incisive is a close relative of incisor, which refers to a front tooth typically adapted for cutting. So it's no surprise that incisive has a specific meaning in dentistry, describing that which is of relating to or situated near the incisors. Both incisive and incisor come from the Latin verb kadere, meaning to cut. English is rich in cuttings, from the fruitful stem of kaedere. Some examples to sink your teeth into are scissors, chisel incise meaning to cut into or engrave excise meaning to remove by cutting incision meaning cut or gash precise meaning minutely exact and concise, meaning brief. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. Visit Merriam Webster.com today for definitions, wordplay and trending word lookups.