“Epigram (noun): A wise, cleverly expressed saying, often with a memorably inverted or satiric twist; witty observation. Adjective: epigrammatic, epigrammatical; adverb: epigrammatically; noun: epigrammatism.
‘The classic epigram is not a mosquito bite, which smarts awhile and goes away; it is a bee sting with the stinger left in, and it smarts forever.’ Willard Espy, An Almanac of Words at Play”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Mark's Text Terminal 