Sample Sentences for
caustic
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

caustic as in:  a caustic chemical

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Don't get it on your skin. It's caustic.
caustic = capable of damaging or eating away (such as a strong acid)
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    Be careful. The chemical is caustic.
    caustic = corrosive or damaging
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    It's more than the reinforced elevator, or the claustrophobia of being so far underground, or the caustic smell of antiseptic.  (source)
    caustic = harsh
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    And they had the caustic knowledge that no one had come between them and tragedy.  (source)
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    This morning, gasping lungfuls of caustic, snow-filled air, he had apparently frozen his larynx.  (source)
    caustic = harsh or damaging
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    Evidently the Tilghman brothers owned a giant vat of some caustic solution that stripped everything to the bare wood.  (source)
    caustic = corrosive
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    On Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers were being trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine.  (source)
    caustic = damaging or harsh
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    If Kilvin's demonstration was any indication, I guessed the whole shop could be a sea of flame and caustic fog in less than a minute.  (source)
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    In the past when he walked out like that and sat looking over the country lying in just the faintest visible shape where the lost moon tracked the caustic waste he'd sometimes see a light.  (source)
    caustic = corrosive or harsh
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    Matron's by contrast were doughy white, the knuckles large and red as if someone had taken a ruler to them; the knobby excrescencies on the fingers spoke of nothing but age and toil and the caustic soaps and scrubbings which were the first tools of her profession;  (source)
    caustic = harsh
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    With a passionate haste, she looked around her at the crowd, with eyes as smarting, unseeing, and tearful as if an oculist had put caustic eye-drops into them, and all the people began to move, shuffle, and walk out of the room, leaving her at last alone, behind half-closed doors.  (source)
    caustic = damaging or harsh
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    Sometimes they find tins of motor oil, caustic solvents, plastic bottles of bleach.  (source)
    caustic = corrosive or harsh
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    Some days the halls were suffused with a caustic scent, as of a cleanser applied too liberally, other days with a silvery medicinal odor, as if a dentist were at work somewhere in the building easing a customer into a deep sleep.  (source)
    caustic = harsh
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    For many-headed is this surrounding Hydra; one head cut off, two more appear—unless the right caustic is applied to the mutilated  (source)
    caustic = damaging or harsh
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caustic as in:  a caustic person

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She has a caustic sense of humor.
caustic = sarcastic, critical, or harsh
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    I always enjoy her remarks, though they can be a bit caustic.
    caustic = sarcastic or harsh
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    You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation.  (source)
    caustic = sarcastic, critical, or harsh
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    He gestured with the folded white cloth and gave a short, caustic laugh.  (source)
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    He never said anything to that effect, but he continually threw caustic remarks my way, cutting me short, ignoring me, sometimes being just plain rude.  (source)
    caustic = sarcastic, critical, or harsh
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    "Oh," Beatrice said caustically, "the one you went chasing when you shoulda been minding your own business."  (source)
    caustically = sarcastically or critically
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    ...the latter—saturnine, spare and tall, one in whom a discreet causticity went along with a manner less genial than polite, replied, "Your pardon, Mr. Purser."  (source)
    causticity = critical nature
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    Gregarious by nature, Hall proved to be a skillful raconteur with a caustic Kiwi wit.  (source)
    caustic = sarcastic
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    "Do you?" asks Prim caustically.  (source)
    caustically = sarcastically
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    Mr. Deane, he considered, was the "knowingest" man of his acquaintance, and he had besides a ready causticity of tongue that made an agreeable supplement to Mr. Tulliver's own tendency that way, which had remained in rather an inarticulate condition.  (source)
    causticity = sarcasm
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    Just as Allied soldiers, like the cultures they came from, often held virulently racist views of the Japanese, Japanese soldiers and civilians, intensely propagandized by their government, usually carried their own caustic prejudices about their enemies, seeing them as brutish, subhuman beasts or fearsome "Anglo-Saxon devils."  (source)
    caustic = critical or harsh
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    "You're going to go back and be a cowboy?" she said caustically.  (source)
    caustically = sarcastically
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    Further complicating matters, the prelate was deaf in his left ear, partial to Latin epigrams, and prone to stare at décolletage whenever he drank a glass of wine; while the Duchess Obolensky, who was particularly caustic in summer, frowned upon pithy sayings and could not abide discussions of the arts.  (source)
    caustic = sarcastic, critical, or harsh
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    "That may be," he said caustically.  (source)
    caustically = sarcastically or critically
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