What's the difference between charming and piquant?

Charming


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Charm
  • (a.) Pleasing the mind or senses in a high degree; delighting; fascinating; attractive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) However, growing accustomed to “this strange atmosphere”, the Observer man became dazzled by Burgess’s “brilliance and charm”.
  • (2) 133 Hatfield Street, +27 21 462 1430, nineflowers.com The Fritz Hotel Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Fritz is a charming, slightly-faded retreat in a quiet residential street – an oasis of calm yet still in the heart of the city, with the bars and restaurants of Kloof Street five minutes’ walk away.
  • (3) Song appeared to give Bolt a good luck charm to wear around his wrist.
  • (4) We all do different things.” She was front and centre at Ashley’s side in footage shot last week by Sky News cameramen, who were also part of the “selected media” entourage invited to Shirebrook to launch the group’s charm offensive.
  • (5) Bargain of the week Charming but teeny-tiny one-bedroom period cottage, £55,000, with williamsonandhenry.com .
  • (6) The impressive choice of drinks ranges from local cider to unusual rosés from Navarra and punchy Toro and Bierzo reds, all selected by charming Nubia, wife of Juan Mari.
  • (7) The crucial additional feature of his nature, however, was that the apparently guileless charm was accompanied by a razor-sharp shrewdness.
  • (8) I think we are still the underdogs because they have high quality but we will try to do our best – if we lose it’s because Sevilla made a fantastic performance.” As well as missing a penalty Sevilla also hit the woodwork on two occasions, with the Leicester goal living a charmed life at times.
  • (9) In it he translated Trump’s coarse ramblings into charming straight talk and came up with the phrase “truthful hyperbole”, which captures brilliantly an approach to business and politics in which everything is the greatest, the most beautiful.
  • (10) For all Lagarde's charm, it's hard not to feel a sense of Alice In Wonderland bewilderment about the IMF's work.
  • (11) The best charm shows water next to Heaven and then items representing qualities of Air, Earth and Water.
  • (12) For real will-this-do illustrating, look no further than conjoined twins Tip and Tap , although they admittedly boast a certain erstaz charm not seen post- Pique (the much-maligned Goleo VI and Pille the Erudite Ball apart).
  • (13) Seth Smith makes the final out of the A's season, which is a good luck charm for the Boston Red Sox, as Smith made the final out for the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series that Boston won.
  • (14) In the tradition of the American author Patricia Highsmith, creator of the charming psychopath Tom Ripley, Rendell used twisting plots to expose twisted minds.
  • (15) As to Beyoncé herself, Hamilton had nothing but praise: "She is a very smart, serene lady … utterly charming and focused."
  • (16) He strikes me more as a clever man - oh, very clever - than a necessarily charming man; for there's a distance, an aloofness.
  • (17) Lord of the Rings made him the doomed anti-hero , he was easily the best thing in the disastrous Troy, giving Odysseus guile, wit and that familiar, rough-edged charm, and he terrified TV viewers as property developer John Dawson in the dark and brilliant Red Riding .
  • (18) Pauline Kael, when reviewing the film, said, "Jane Fonda has been a charming, witty, nudie cutie in recent years, and now gets a chance at an archetypal character.
  • (19) The former Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell was a Jekyll and Hyde character who employed a mixture of charm and menace, his libel trial against the Sun newspaper over the Plebgate affair heard.
  • (20) 5.14pm GMT Alan Pardew speaks ... With a smirk playing around his chops in a charm offensive on Sky Sports, he says he ‘massively regrets” sticking the hid on Hull City midfielder David Meyler and says he’ll be sitting down for matches in the future.

Piquant


Definition:

  • (a.) Stimulating to the taste; giving zest; tart; sharp; pungent; as, a piquant anecdote.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The present experiment shows that the piquant chow eaten by rats produced a fall in rectal temperature 48 h later.
  • (2) And there are entries that point to Peel as an incorrigible collector and tireless champion of the recherche: with all due respect to an oeuvre that included the piquant-sounding Fuckin' 4 Bucks and I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, how many albums by Washington DC splattercore pioneers the Accüsed does one man really need?
  • (3) One final thought: if Lebedev is toying with the idea of distributing the Independent for free, he may well be able, piquantly, to acquire the paper and its Sunday sister for the same price.
  • (4) The great lexicographer, of course, is as fat in fame as ever, though more for his piquant remarks to Boswell than for his own writings.
  • (5) In three experiments on the social induction of food preferences in rats, I found: (a) that eight 30-min exposures of a naive "observer" rat to a "demonstrator" rat fed one of two approximately equipalatable diets produced observer preference for the diet fed to its demonstrator that lasted for more than a month, (b) that simple exposure of naive subjects to a diet itself, rather than to a rat that had eaten a diet, was not sufficient to enhance preference for that diet, and (c) that lasting preference for an unpalatable, piquant diet could also be established by exposing naive rats to demonstrators that had eaten the piquant diet, but not by simply exposure to the piquant diet itself.
  • (6) In this series, the choice between piquant and nonpiquant chow showed that 4 rats out of 5 preferred to eat the chow without capsaicin.
  • (7) After this habituation period, when free to choose, 3 rats out of 4 preferred eating the piquant chow.
  • (8) The food cooked in this predominantly Muslim neighbourhood is as piquant as the hot pink and burnt orange painted houses that rise gently up the lower slopes of Signal Hill, part of Table Mountain.
  • (9) Clearly, this hyperreal simulation juxtaposes piquantly with the all-too real world in which Uruguayan football fans send death threats to the Newcastle United defender Paul Dummett for clattering their compatriot, striker Luis Suarez.
  • (10) The present experiment provides some evidence that rats accustomed to eat piquant food manifested, when free to choose, a preference for an innately unpalatable piquant chow.
  • (11) He rejoined the Guardian as sketchwriter and remained there for the rest of his working life, consistently finding even on the dullest and least eventful of days something vivid, piquant and unexpected to say.
  • (12) Just as Lolita , as Nabokov piquantly notes in his afterword, was variously read as "old Europe debauching young America" or "young America debauching old Europe", GTA IV leaves itself interpretatively open as to whether Niko is corrupted by America or whether he and his ilk (many of the most vicious characters whose paths Niko crosses are immigrants) are themselves bacterial agents of corruption.
  • (13) There is real dissent in Italy, and in its gentle but piquant way, Reality is part of that.
  • (14) It’s tempting to imagine that writer and director Andrew Haigh conjured that line in response to the more piquant criticisms of his series, whose lack of an obvious agenda led some to label it “post-gay”.
  • (15) When the club switched the catering contract from one local firm to another in the early 2000s, the new chef spent months trying to perfect the piquant blend, which his piqued predecessor refused to pass on.