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PIQUANCY
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Dictionary entry overview: What does piquancy mean?
• PIQUANCY (noun)
The noun PIQUANCY has 2 senses:
1. a tart spicy quality
2. the quality of being agreeably stimulating or mentally exciting
Familiarity information: PIQUANCY used as a noun is rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
A tart spicy quality
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Synonyms:
nip; piquance; piquancy; piquantness; tang; tanginess; zest
Hypernyms ("piquancy" is a kind of...):
spice; spicery; spiciness (the property of being seasoned with spice and so highly flavored)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The quality of being agreeably stimulating or mentally exciting
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Synonyms:
piquance; piquancy; piquantness
Hypernyms ("piquancy" is a kind of...):
quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)
Context examples
Still some novelty was necessary, to give to their return the piquancy with which I wished it to be invested.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It was one of the many curious fashions which have now died out, that men who were blasé from luxury and high living seemed to find a fresh piquancy in life by descending to the lowest resorts, so that the night-houses and gambling-dens in Covent Garden or the Haymarket often gathered illustrious company under their smoke-blackened ceilings.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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