> English, so weird
Borrowed from just-as-weird French "piquer" - to stab or jab.
Borrowed from just-as-weird French "piquer" - to stab or jab.
Literally «piquer» means “to sting” or “to prick” more than stab or jab, it's never used to describe inter-human aggression.
And piquer is colloquially used to mean “to steal” (and it's probably the most common way of using it in French after describing mosquito bites)
Edit: and I forgot to mention that we already use it for curiosity, in fact the sentence “it piqued my curiosity” was directly taken from French «ça a piqué ma curiosité».
[1] Is English just badly pronounced French [video]:
> The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
(quote swiped from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Nicoll)
Way better than stabbing my interest, in a French fashion or otherwise.
Why do we use "tickle" there? Because a tickle is a type of stimulation, and "fancy" here means "interest", so one is effectively saying "this stimulates my interest".
If we then consult Oxford Language's definition of pique, we find:
> stimulate (interest or curiosity). "you have piqued my curiosity about the man"
The word "piqued" in "this piqued my curiosity" serves as something along the lines of: stimulated, aroused, provoked
This is aligned with the French word "piquer", as a "prick" or "sting" (much like a tickle) would stimulate/arouse/provoke.