Word.ws English Dictionary

piquante

piquante is the alternative form of piquant.

Meaning of piquant

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
  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
  4. Producing a burning sensation due to the presence of chilies or similar spices; spicy, hot.

Forms of piquante

comparativemore piquante
superlativemost piquante

Questions about piquante

What is piquante the alternative form of?
Piquante is the alternative form of piquant.

Words near piquante in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: piquante (page history and authors); piquant (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.

Last updated:

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