What's the difference between delicacy and finesse?

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.

Finesse


Definition:

  • (a.) Subtilty of contrivance to gain a point; artifice; stratagem.
  • (a.) The act of finessing. See Finesse, v. i., 2.
  • (v. i.) To use artifice or stratagem.
  • (v. i.) To attempt, when second or third player, to make a lower card answer the purpose of a higher, when an intermediate card is out, risking the chance of its being held by the opponent yet to play.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president chairing the summit, hoped to finesse an overall agreement on the banking supervisor.
  • (2) Today, however, artists are using them with so much confidence and finesse that the best colored pencil drawings can hold their own with those of any other technique.
  • (3) He may feel on the margins but this was a reminder that the Spaniard remains a player of sumptuous talent, vision and finesse.
  • (4) If something similar had happened in Borgen, Nyborg would have somehow finessed seeming at once a woman of the people and a major international figure.
  • (5) Adaptic and Profile showed the most amounts of wear, followed by Finesse, Miradapt, and Isopast.
  • (6) She comes across as vapid and totally uncouth without a bit of finesse about her.
  • (7) Earthworks were started in late 2011, while the route was still being finessed, and continued despite the difficulties caused by torrential rain that has fallen in the region over the last year.
  • (8) What the presentation lacked in finesse, the dish made up for in flavour.
  • (9) Fat chicks deserve that, too.’” I probably would have finessed it a bit if I’d been sober, but way to lean in, bossy, drunk past-Lindy!
  • (10) The architects of the Chiang Mai Initiative attempted to finesse the problem by requiring countries that draw more than 30% of their swaps to negotiate a program with the IMF.
  • (11) However, increasingly prominent neo-cons within the administration, led by National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, are exploiting the circumstances to maneuver Trump into a position where he is pressured into green lighting a full scale ground war, an attack on Damascus and a confrontation with Russia.” There Is No Trump Doctrine, And That’s Okay Publication: Commentary Author: Noah Rothman has long been this column’s favourite neoconservative Why you should read it: Rothman makes an effort to finesse the problem that everyone might want to claim Trump faces: Trump has no clear foreign policy doctrine.
  • (12) The former culture minister Jack Lang saluted his "vital energy"; the Socialist leader, Martine Aubry, hailed his "great finesse".
  • (13) With nothing left to the imagination and nowhere to hide, it's not surprising that users finesse their profiles a little.
  • (14) These are: Adaptic, Concise, Miradapt, Degufill and Finesse.
  • (15) However, there is still some finessing to do, and only two major energy providers have signed up.
  • (16) The quasi-farcical question of British involvement in Operation Bluestar (as Mark Tully pointed out , had the SAS really been involved, it's likely the consequent destruction would have been achieved with considerable finesse) is secondary to the horror that won't go away.
  • (17) There is a certain quiet finesse to my 15-hour shredded brisket sandwich, with cheese, onions and coleslaw.
  • (18) It's not a situation where I'm finessing every tiny detail.
  • (19) However, Abramovich finessed his contact with Kerimov and, to Tottenham's fury, Willian was on his way to Stamford Bridge, albeit for a slightly higher price.
  • (20) The undoubted political commitment to the euro means that there are now calls for a fast-track approach to full political union, but this means repeating the top-down approach used for monetary union and – at a time when the markets are talking about a Greek exit within weeks or months – would take years to finesse.