Poignancy is the sad, tender quality itself — the power a moment, a story, or a picture has to make a sharp kind of pity or longing rise up in you. We say "the poignancy of the last scene" when that scene does not only make you sad, but stays with you, often because love or beauty is mixed in with the loss. It is the noun; the matching describing word is poignant. You will hear it in book and film talk more than in the street. Though actually, it is not a bigger, fancier way to say "pain". Pain can be loud and simple; poignancy is quieter, and it usually needs a human story behind it — a goodbye, an old photograph, a life that did not get to finish.