He exploded the brittle wit into clattering shards of icy hilarity.

The Ex, a band from Amsterdam that rarely visits the United States, combines the bent oom-pahs of a European heritage, surreal and politicized lyrics and the precise dissonances and cantilevered structures of progressive rock into songs with a bleak, brittle wit.

Directed by Mike Bradwell, "Resident Alien" trades familiarly on the brittle wit and wisdom and drolly effeminate presence for which Crisp was known.

Stylistically unsure, Mr. Albee's writing aspires to the brittle wit of Noel Coward and the spareness of Beckett, and Gillian even alludes to other writers in her desire to be "eclectic."

As portrayed by Alex Jennings, he looks and talks like a dyspeptic refugee from a Noel Coward comedy, a man whose infinite touchiness seems to stem from his fear that no one appreciates his brittle wit.

She wore clothes so old-fashioned they'd actually come back into style again, and possessed a quiet poise and brittle wit that had won her the respect of many.

With the revolution fomenting in the luxuriously detailed background, the film captures a paradoxical historical moment poised between libertinism and oppression, and does so with a brittle wit grounded in Mr. Aurenche's inimitably cynical aphorisms.

Like those Tin Pan Alley and Broadway greats, rappers are populist poets who tame slangy American vernacular speech into songs of brittle wit.

Oh, the brave, brittle wit of these souls in jeopardy as darkness closes in!

These are, first, such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned; such as was Hermogenes the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle; who afterwards waxed stupid.