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 adjective)

Causing the feeling of a sudden excitement.

* , chapter=5

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.}}