Word.ws English Dictionary

piquant

Syllables: pi·quant/ˈpiːkənt/

piquant adjective: causing hurt feelings; scathing, severe.

Adjective

piquant (comparative more piquant, superlative most piquant)

  1. (archaic) Causing hurt feelings; scathing, severe.
  2. Stimulating to the senses; engaging; charming.
    • Their husbands […] leave home to seek for more agreeable, may I be allowed to use a significant French word, piquant society […]1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1792, →OCLC
    • He looked after her as she retreated, with a fondness which was rendered more piquant, as it were, by the mixture of a certain scorn which accompanied it.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 55, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
  3. Favorably stimulating to the palate; pleasantly spicy; tangy.
    • Pork Chops with Apple and Port These chops are baked in a piquant sauce containing fruit, honey, cinnamon, lemon and port, all of which reduces to a spicy syrup.2000, Lynn Bedford Hall, The Best of Cooking in South Africa, 2nd edition, Cape Town: Struik Publishers, →ISBN, page 103
    • 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 […]2005, Clifford A. Wright, Some Like it Hot: Spicy Favorites from the World's Hot Zones, Boston, Mass.: Harvard Common Press, →ISBN, page 170
  4. Producing a burning sensation due to the presence of chilies or similar spices; spicy, hot.

piquant meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

piquant in Tamil

சுவாரசியமான, ஆர்வத்தைக் கிளறும், இன்சுவையை, இன்னுணர்வைத் தூண்டும்

piquant in Urdu

تیز

piquant in Bengali

spicy
ঝাল jhal

piquant in Malayalam

എരിവുള്ള, രസമുള്ള, മൂർച്ചയുള്ള, വീര്യമേറിയ
More languagesFewer languages
piquant in Kannada
ಉರಿಸುವ, ಕೆರಳಿಸುವ, ಗಮನ ಸೆಳೆವ, ಹಿತವಾದ ಖಾರದ
piquant in Myanmar
စပ် cap

Forms of piquant

comparativemore piquant
superlativemost piquant
alternative formpiquante

Origin of piquant

Borrowed from Middle French piquant (“pricking, stimulating, irritating”), present participle of piquer, possibly from Old French pikier (“to prick, sting, nettle”). Doublet of picong. Related to pike.

Words formed from piquant

Words that rhyme with piquant

Questions about piquant

What does piquant mean?
Piquant means causing hurt feelings; scathing, severe.
What is piquant in Tamil?
Piquant in Tamil is சுவாரசியமான, ஆர்வத்தைக் கிளறும், இன்சுவையை. See Piquant meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is piquant?
Piquant is an adjective.
How do you pronounce piquant?
Piquant is pronounced /ˈpiːkənt/.

Words near piquant in the dictionary

  1. Piqua
  2. piquance
  3. piquances
  4. piquancies
  5. piquancy
  6. piquant
  7. piquante
  8. piquantly
  9. piquantness
  10. pique
  11. pique-devant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piquant (page history and authors); piquant (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); piquant (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); piquant (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); piquant (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-piquant 01.ogg.

Cite this entry: “piquant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/piquant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.