1 [usuallybeforenoun] (of eyes or the way they look at sb) seeming to notice things about another person that would not normally be noticed, especially in a way that makes that person feel anxious or embarrassed:
She looked at me with piercing blue eyes. * a piercing look / gaze
2 [usuallybeforenoun] (of sounds) very high, loud and unpleasant:
a piercing shriek / scream / whistle * She has such a piercing voice.
3 [onlybeforenoun] (of feelings) affecting you very strongly, especially in a way that causes you pain:
piercing sadness / fear / nostalgia
4 (of the wind or cold) very strong and feeling as if it can pass through your clothes and skin
5 [onlybeforenoun] sharp and able to make a hole in sth:
The belly of the animal is covered in long piercing spikes.
piercingly adverb:
His eyes were piercingly blue. * The weather remained piercingly cold.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for piercing is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is piercing a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, piercing is tagged as adjective.
Does piercing appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — piercing appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
