What's the difference between delicacy and delicate?

Delicacy


Definition:

  • (a.) The state or condition of being delicate; agreeableness to the senses; delightfulness; as, delicacy of flavor, of odor, and the like.
  • (a.) Nicety or fineness of form, texture, or constitution; softness; elegance; smoothness; tenderness; and hence, frailty or weakness; as, the delicacy of a fiber or a thread; delicacy of a hand or of the human form; delicacy of the skin; delicacy of frame.
  • (a.) Nice propriety of manners or conduct; susceptibility or tenderness of feeling; refinement; fastidiousness; and hence, in an exaggerated sense, effeminacy; as, great delicacy of behavior; delicacy in doing a kindness; delicacy of character that unfits for earnest action.
  • (a.) Addiction to pleasure; luxury; daintiness; indulgence; luxurious or voluptuous treatment.
  • (a.) Nice and refined perception and discrimination; critical niceness; fastidious accuracy.
  • (a.) The state of being affected by slight causes; sensitiveness; as, the delicacy of a chemist's balance.
  • (a.) That which is alluring, delicate, or refined; a luxury or pleasure; something pleasant to the senses, especially to the sense of taste; a dainty; as, delicacies of the table.
  • (a.) Pleasure; gratification; delight.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Russia has stepped up its battle against parmesan cheese, Danish bacon and other European delicacies, announcing it plans to incinerate contraband shipments on the border as soon as they are discovered.
  • (2) When the two sides played here 77 days earlier Stoke had racked up a 5-0 lead by half-time, the first time that had happened to Liverpool since 1976, but this time Hughes’s attackers had no delicacy around the penalty area.
  • (3) The very first collection we worked on together was called The Birds, and when he got the Givenchy job and we went to Paris, and he got to see what the Givenchy ateliers could do with feathers, he was just blown away.” The photographer Anne Deniau, who took many portraits of McQueen and whose camera was from 1997 to 2010 the only one allowed backstage at McQueen shows, felt that he loved “the lightness, the delicacy, of feathers.
  • (4) If i remember correctly, a third of the milk was turned sour, a Russian delicacy'.
  • (5) As regards the technique, the delicacy and the specificity of the research, suggest the use of very sensible methods, which leave simplicity of execution and immediacy of results, out of consideration.
  • (6) Not that I'd dare tell everyone to be vegetarian, but I can warn those silly gourmets defending F&M's right to sell this "delicacy", that come the revolution, it won't be the guillotine for them, just tubes of grain and fat pumped endlessly down their throats.
  • (7) He has always been extremely careful in public on any matters relating to religion or Northern Irish politics, such is the delicacy of that situation for someone of McIlroy’s prominence.
  • (8) This was seen as a slightly touristy and embarrassing thing to do, so my then (native) boyfriend left me to it and made a detour to the newly opened McDonald’s to buy multiple “cheeseburgery” (another word that cheered me greatly) to take on the 10-hour train journey back to St Petersburg, so that people at home could try this great delicacy.
  • (9) This quality assurance has been slow evolving in clinical flow cytometry for a variety of reasons: the exquisite sensitivity and delicacy of the instrumentation that recognize previously undetectable variations in staining; the constant improvement of the hardware and software; the rapid development of new techniques and reagents of clinical interest; and the failure of any existing specialty or subspecialty to encompass all aspects of flow cytometry.
  • (10) Over my week in the Netherlands, I’d tried other delicacies: locust tabbouleh; chicken crumbed in buffalo worms; bee larvae ceviche; tempura-fried crickets; rose beetle larvae stew; soy grasshoppers; chargrilled sticky rice with wasp paste; buffalo worm, avocado and tomato salad; a cucumber, basil and locust drink; and a fermented, Asian-style dipping sauce made from grasshoppers and mealworms.
  • (11) Official advice on low-fat diet and cholesterol is wrong, says health charity Read more Artichokes are still a Roman delicacy, and when it comes to diet in Renaissance and baroque Italian art, this is a clue.
  • (12) Some will be used to encourage farmers to grow alfalfa, another delicacy of the great Alsaces.
  • (13) The technical requirements of child's urethral surgery are more critical due to the small size and the delicacy of the urethra.
  • (14) The second, of course, is the voyeuristic pleasure the camera takes in the delicacies: the shot of a spoon plunging through the soft, airy volume of a chocolate souffle, for example.
  • (15) Microscopic study of the human lacrimal ducts places the emphasis on the delicacy and complexity of the relations between the lacrimal muscle and the mobile lacrimal tubular system.
  • (16) The timetable varies each year, and the train stops frequently at trackside restaurants and platform food stalls for delicacies such as smoked trout from the Vojmån river, or warm cinnamon buns.
  • (17) The times I identified most with Niko were not during the game's frequent cut scenes, which drop bombs of "meaning" and "narrative importance" with nuclear delicacy, but rather when I watched him move through the world of Liberty City and projected on to him my own guesses as to what he was thinking and feeling.
  • (18) Therefore, all of the complicated foreign delicacies will be spelt phonetically here so you know what I'm talking about.
  • (19) Photograph: columbiahillen via GuardianWitness Growing up in Transylvania, one of the local delicacies was a dish called "blankets", made with polenta and cheese, as well as cream and bacon.
  • (20) The year before, reunited with Lean for the period comedy Hobson's Choice, he had provided a characterisation which had a representative blend of rumbustiousness and delicacy of detail.

Delicate


Definition:

  • (a.) Addicted to pleasure; luxurious; voluptuous; alluring.
  • (a.) Pleasing to the senses; refinedly agreeable; hence, adapted to please a nice or cultivated taste; nice; fine; elegant; as, a delicate dish; delicate flavor.
  • (a.) Slight and shapely; lovely; graceful; as, "a delicate creature."
  • (a.) Fine or slender; minute; not coarse; -- said of a thread, or the like; as, delicate cotton.
  • (a.) Slight or smooth; light and yielding; -- said of texture; as, delicate lace or silk.
  • (a.) Soft and fair; -- said of the skin or a surface; as, a delicate cheek; a delicate complexion.
  • (a.) Light, or softly tinted; -- said of a color; as, a delicate blue.
  • (a.) Refined; gentle; scrupulous not to trespass or offend; considerate; -- said of manners, conduct, or feelings; as, delicate behavior; delicate attentions; delicate thoughtfulness.
  • (a.) Tender; not able to endure hardship; feeble; frail; effeminate; -- said of constitution, health, etc.; as, a delicate child; delicate health.
  • (a.) Requiring careful handling; not to be rudely or hastily dealt with; nice; critical; as, a delicate subject or question.
  • (a.) Of exacting tastes and habits; dainty; fastidious.
  • (a.) Nicely discriminating or perceptive; refinedly critical; sensitive; exquisite; as, a delicate taste; a delicate ear for music.
  • (a.) Affected by slight causes; showing slight changes; as, a delicate thermometer.
  • (n.) A choice dainty; a delicacy.
  • (n.) A delicate, luxurious, or effeminate person.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Even if it does not always provide the solution to a particularly delicate problem, which is often of vital importance, it provides data which, modifiable and better used, should provide an adequate notion of the anatomical and physiopathological state in aortic stenosis.
  • (2) A layer of thick and dense delicate filament-like substance was attached to the surface of the cell body of Cp in the ultrathin sections with ruthenium red staining, in the case of Cj only a little of such a substance could be noted.
  • (3) For a while North Korea refused to play, but after delicate negotiations the players were persuaded back on to the pitch and the correct flag was displayed alongside the team photos.
  • (4) As one example, certain aspects of Gawain's situation seem oddly redolent of a more contemporary predicament, namely our complex and delicate relationship with the natural world.
  • (5) In sections of cells rich in cytoplasm, the basal bodies are particularly difficult to visualize due to their small size (25 to 45 mmicro) and the lack of properties that would enable one to distinguish them from the ribonucleoprotein structures; in addition, their boundary appears to be delicate.
  • (6) "These are delicate times and we take a positive role," Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, told the Guardian today.
  • (7) Even extraembryonic membranes can form strands of tissue that can entangle the delicate developing foot plate, and calcaneovalgus deformities could conceivably be established.
  • (8) Through this clear indication, it could be said, that pregnancies with delicate prognosis through tocolytic therapy are possibly unnecessarily lengthened and the final result is not better.
  • (9) Oil is coating birds and delicate wetlands along the Louisiana coast, and the political fallout from the spill has reached Washington, where the head of the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned today.
  • (10) Filo pastry contains very little fat itself but relies on fat being added later in between incredibly fine sheets, allowing them to separate during cooking, and so shatter in the mouth into fine delicate shards.
  • (11) Ultrarapid freezing, followed by delicate freeze-substitution, immobilizes and retains much more ECM than chemical fixatives that include tannic acid (TA).
  • (12) Ultrastructural study confirmed the diagnosis by revealing tumour cells with delicate interdigitating cytoplasmic processes and basement membrane formation resembling pericytes.
  • (13) The cholera toxin subunit B-containing retinal efferents were effectively stained and yielded the presence of axons with delicate boutons on passage and nerve endings.
  • (14) Type I cases were technically more difficult and had a slightly higher surgical morbidity than Type II cases, especially if an oblique bone septum had asymmetrically divided the cord into one larger hemicord and one smaller, hence, very delicate, hemicord.
  • (15) One thing that isn't the same as in 2003: the delicately balanced relations among the many communities, ethnic and religious, in this most diverse region in Iraq have not been broken again.
  • (16) There are many differences between full dentures on Brånemark implants and fixed partial dentures built on the same type of implants: due to some more critical anatomical conditions, the choice of number, position and length of the implants is more delicate; the need of an harmonious crown-gingival tissue relationship; higher occlusal forces than in edentalous cases; difficulty in satisfying aesthetic requirements and ease of hygiene.
  • (17) Tissue characteristics of this laser energy should permit the vaporization of the stapes footplate or oval window soft tissue without thermal effect to the vestibule and without passing through the perilymph to damage the delicate structures of the inner ear.
  • (18) David Cameron suggests that the prospect of giving prisoners the vote makes him feel physically ill. For a man with such an apparently delicate constitution, it is surprising that wilfully ignoring a succession of court rulings appears to have so little effect on him."
  • (19) In their hands, the work of constitutional negotiations became a delicate art.
  • (20) The climate of xenophobia and police brutality in Egypt has raised questions for Italian prosecutors as to whether it was appropriate for Cambridge University to allow a young foreign student to go Cairo and undertake field research into such a delicate topic.