What's the difference between piquant and racy?

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.

Racy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Having a strong flavor indicating origin; of distinct characteristic taste; tasting of the soil; hence, fresh; rich.
  • (superl.) Hence: Exciting to the mental taste by a strong or distinctive character of thought or language; peculiar and piquant; fresh and lively.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I feel like itʼs a bit desperate," Shields said of her former co-star , as she wondered who was advising her to put on such a racy display.
  • (2) If Mensch's life were a novel it would be the sort of racy page-turner given pride of place in airport booksellers at this time of year.
  • (3) Ben has written a few novels (with excellent fake-real names, like Air Dance), but they weren't exactly to small-town tastes: "Miss Coogan at the drugstore says that [Billy Said Keep Going] is pretty racy," Susan tells Ben early in the book; while another character remembers being perturbed when reading a homosexual rape scene in Conway's Daughter.
  • (4) The Borat star apparently walked after his vision of a racy treatment depicting Mercury's famously salacious lifestyle was at odds with the more family-friendly approach desired by the singer's erstwhile bandmates.
  • (5) Baron Cohen, who starred in Les Miserables and Hugo and had recruited the Oscar-winning screenwriter Peter Morgan to work on the script, reportedly wanted a racy "warts-and-all" approach .
  • (6) Intact acinar cells in pancreatic tissue sections and isolated acini showed a strong binding of WGA, RACI, and HPA on the apical cell surface, whereas VAAI, UEAI, LCA, and Con A reacted strongly with the basolateral glycocalyx, but not with the apical surface.
  • (7) Actual numbers of adverse events were observed for each hospital and compared to the number predicted by the RAMI, RARI, and RACI models.
  • (8) Companies raised $21.8bn (£14.4bn), up 74% from the year before, but a number of offerings were cancelled towards the end of the year as markets grew rocky and investors became wary of racy businesses.
  • (9) That image started to unravel after James Watson published The Double Helix , his racy behind-the-scenes account of the pursuit of the structure of DNA.
  • (10) I want my readers to know what’s going wrong with our society and our times,” said Murong Xuecun, an outspoken novelist whose racy books about debauched officials and corruption can no longer published in mainland China.
  • (11) Radcliffe had been (spuriously) tipped to replace Sacha Baron Cohen in the planned biopic, the latter reportedly having exited over his desire for a racy "warts and all" portrayal of the flamboyant singer.
  • (12) The time had come for his brand of racy and riotous comedy.
  • (13) Using existing data sources, we developed three risk-adjusted measures of hospital quality: the risk-adjusted mortality index (RAMI), the risk-adjusted readmissions index (RARI), and the risk-adjusted complication index (RACI).
  • (14) Ofcom recently ruled against the broadcast of a racy Flo Rida video on MTV and Channel 4's 4Music that it deemed too sexualised for a pre-9pm watershed transmission.
  • (15) Metabolic labelling experiments with 35SO4 showed that the RACI-bound glycoconjugates released by A121 cells were sulfated.
  • (16) "This is a two-hander and Matt, you're only as good as your other hand," Douglas said, then got really racy: "You want the bottom or the top?"
  • (17) The culture minister heads a major publishing house, and the economy minister, rightwing Bruno Le Maire , once wrote racy romances about a lovestruck nurse – under a pseudonym – before graduating to literary fiction and memoirs.
  • (18) We can start romances through dating sites, get laid with apps like Grindr or Tinder , and flirt with our romantic interests or our long-time loves by sending racy Snapchats , or sexy texts.
  • (19) In retrospect, it seems about as racy as a cave-drawing – which is almost certainly one reason why sales have plummeted.
  • (20) In 2010 a comic book version of Ulysses was ruled too racy for Apple, but the company later changed its mind about allowing a naked Buck Mulligan to be shown in an iPad application, and the complete version of Ulysses Seen is also now available .