PIQUANT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does piquant mean? 

• PIQUANT (adjective)
  The adjective PIQUANT has 3 senses:

1. having an agreeably pungent taste

2. engagingly stimulating or provocative

3. attracting or delighting

  Familiarity information: PIQUANT used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PIQUANT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having an agreeably pungent taste

Synonyms:

piquant; savory; savoury; zesty

Similar:

tasty (pleasing to the sense of taste)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Engagingly stimulating or provocative

Synonyms:

piquant; salty

Context example:

salty language

Similar:

stimulating (rousing or quickening activity or the senses)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Attracting or delighting

Synonyms:

engaging; piquant

Context example:

a piquant face with large appealing eyes

Similar:

attractive (pleasing to the eye or mind especially through beauty or charm)

 Context examples 

On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Besides, the eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go on.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the gossips away from this four-year-old drama.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was very fetching to make the girl propose in the course of being reunited, and Martin discovered, bit by bit, other decidedly piquant and fetching ruses.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Of her daughters, the eldest, Amy, was rather little: naive, and child-like in face and manner, and piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue sash became her well.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"Is she original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk's whole seraglio, gazelle- eyes, houri forms, and all!"

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)