The phrase "piercing question" is correct and can be used in written English.
It is often used to describe a particularly sharp, incisive or powerful question that cuts through the surface and gets to the heart of the matter. Example: The journalist's piercing question during the press conference left the politician speechless and revealed the truth behind the scandal.
"It seems to me we give zero consideration to the possibility that it might be plagiarism, but unintentional," Mr. Ellis wrote, adding: "If we changed the name and obscured the disability-indicating details, would we still be willing to consider innocence?" A piercing question, that — though so, too, is whether Ms. Viswanathan's case warrants a comparison to Ms. Keller's.
As they replace it with a "two-baby" policy, the piercing question is whether they will ever learn and what can be done to meet economic growth targets in spite of having created the most lopsided population on the planet.
We remember him not just for the violence he endured and subsequent riots, but for the character he showed with the simple but piercing question: "Can't we all get along?" The one person with an undeniable reason to be angry in that moment became an unlikely but welcome voice of reason, compassion and wisdom.
Everything is informal, but they ask these piercing questions," he says.
With disarming politeness, he got away with the most piercing questions.
However blithe they seem, his novels ask piercing questions that have no answers, yet evoke endlessly rich possibilities.
Naturally, Mr. Glass is the right man for inviting those kinds of confessions with his ability to pose piercing questions in casual, almost innocent, ways.
When the Holocaust Memorial Museum first opened in 1993, culture and art critics asked lofty, piercing questions about it, the kind that critics always pose about memorials with multiple purposes.
When fund-raisers sit down with married couples, the women ask "piercing questions," said Robert I. Evans, founder of the EHL Consulting Group in Willow Grove, Pa., which specializes in nonprofits.
The event is actually great: 35 of the 40 people turn up, but they are really into you and they ask you some fantastically piercing questions.
