… to hear the oboe tone described as piercing:

An oboe is a woodwind instrument that produces a clear yet quite a piercing sound when played.

(Read here, on an ezine article about purchasing an oboe.)

Couldn’t we use a different word? Pretty please? Piercing sounds … well … painful. And while we oboists like to make a listener cry, we’d prefer not to do it because we’ve hurt their ears. We would rather hurt their hearts.

We are nice that way.