Adjective

(en adjective)

Engaging; charming.

Favorably stimulating to the palate; pleasantly spicy; stimulating.

* 2000 , Lynn Bedford Hall, Best of Cooking in South Africa (page 2000)

These chops are baked in a piquant sauce containing fruit, honey, cinnamon, lemon and port, all of which reduces to a spicy syrup.

* 2005 , Clifford A. Wright, Some like it hot: spicy favorites from the world's hot zones

Elsewhere in South America, excepting Bahia in Brazil, one does not encounter piquant cuisine, although one may stumble on a piquant dish now and then...

* 2009 , Sara Engra, Katie Luber, Kimberly Toqe, The Spice Kitchen: Everyday Cooking with Organic Spices (page 9)

French charcuterie relies on cloves in the quatre épices, or four-spice powder, for seasoning fine sausages and piquant marinades.

(archaic) Causing hurt feelings; scathing.

Adjective

(en-adj)

Sharp and harsh, or bitter and not to the taste; pungent.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-29, volume=407, issue=8842, page=29, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Unspontaneous combustion , passage=Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.}}

Causing heat and irritation; corrosive.

Caustic; bitter; bitterly irritating.