piquant

IPA: pˈikʌnt

(archaic) Causing hurt feelings; scathing, severe.
Stimulating to the senses; engaging; charming.
Favorably stimulating to the palate; pleasantly spicy; tangy.
Producing a burning sensation due to the presence of chilies or similar spices; spicy, hot.

Examples of "piquant" in Sentences

That is what you may call piquant, it braces and refreshes a man.
There was a kind of piquant joy in their hearts as they crept up past the Tower, and saw its mighty walls and guns across the water.
One saving grace would be that the MxDW at least wouldn't have that lovely, "piquant" flavor from being smuggled in empty ammonia tankers.
Mr. Buruma skirts the issue by calling this cruel man "fastidious and difficult," "piquant," a "trickster," ... or an example of "bad boy behavior."
He soon tired of the others, wanted something new; recalled the piquant character of the girl and took a fancy into his head that she would lighten his ennui.
Mrs. Cary's "piquant" -- pronounced in a manner that was neither French nor English, but a startling mixture of both -- had a background to it of charitable patronage.
It looks certainly very graceful, fresh, animated, "piquant," as they love to say -- yes! and withal, I repeat, perfectly pure, and may well congratulate itself on the loan of a fallacious grace, not its own.
What is particularly piquant — that's right I used the word piquant — about the conflation of Nicaragua and El Salvador is that it suggests America's entire effort "down there" was nothing but folly, hubris, and imperialism.
It was the old world and the new one brought face to face with a vengeance! the contrast rendered the more piquant from the fact of the new one being represented by the worthy middle-aged baronet, the old by the girl of seventeen.