Sergey Ivanovitch's attitude to the peasants rather piqued Konstantin.
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)
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“I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders.”
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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Does it possess the penultimate exigency, the insouciant escargot, the frisson de voiture of Stan's earlier work? Or does it succumb to the inevitable bouillabaisse en route that every great roman à clef experiences when he reaches the point that the great French director Renault Citroën once, in a moment of pique, described as fromage de la parpluie (literally, "umbrella cheese")?
Dave Barry. Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down, p.132 (2000)