Definition of "pungency" [pun•gen•cy]

• The state of being pungent. (noun)
• A foul odor. (noun)

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• "They and a handful of other spices—ginger, mustard, horseradish, wasabi—are especially valued for a quality often called hotness, but best called pungency: neither a taste nor a smell, but a general feeling of irritation that verges on pain."
• "This keeps the spice from scorching; scorched Sichuan peppercorns have an acrid, bitter pungency which is less than salutary."
• "Through that view-medium of misfortune—of a noble spirit in low environments, and of a squalid and premature death—we view the undoubted facts, (giving, as we read them now, a sad kind of pungency,) that Burns’s were, before all else, the lyrics of illicit loves and carousing intoxication."