• piquant •
Pronunciation: pi-kahnt, (US) pi-kwênt • Hear it!Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Having a sharply pleasant flavor, tart, pungent. 2. Strikingly stimulating to the mind.
Notes: Although this word is generally associated with tastes and smells (piquant sauces), anything pleasantly sharp in the figurative sense can be said to be piquant (piquant wit). It comes with a noun, piquancy, and an adverb, piquantly. Pique is a distant cousin, sharing a Latin source, but "sharp" in a different sense.
In Play: First, an example with the literal meaning of the word: "I didn't realize just how piquant Madeleine's salad dressing was until I arrived home and tried to go to sleep." It may also be used metaphorically: meaning No. 2 above: "I am made aware of just how much I miss the piquant voice of Eartha Kitt every time I hear "C'est si bon" sung by someone else."
Word History: Today's Good Word was taken letter-for-letter from French, where it meant "pricking" or "prickly", from piquer "to jab, prick, irritate". We assume it came from some Vulgar Latin word, piccare "to prick, pierce", but we have no written proof of the existence of such a word. This word is possible since it might have been derived from picus "woodpecker" or some predecessor of picus. Pique, pike and pick in the sense of "pickax" come from the same French source. All Romance languages have a derivation of this mysterious Latin word: French pique, Italian picca, Portuguese pique, Spanish pica. Latin must have contained a word other than picus based on pic- meaning "spear, pike" or otherwise referring to something with a point. (We always appreciate the piquant words recommended by Mark Bailey such as today's Good Word.)