What's the difference between delicacy and subtle?

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.

Subtle


Definition:

  • (superl.) Sly in design; artful; cunning; insinuating; subtile; -- applied to persons; as, a subtle foe.
  • (superl.) Cunningly devised; crafty; treacherous; as, a subtle stratagem.
  • (superl.) Characterized by refinement and niceness in drawing distinctions; nicely discriminating; -- said of persons; as, a subtle logician; refined; tenuous; sinuous; insinuating; hence, penetrative or pervasive; -- said of the mind; its faculties, or its operations; as, a subtle intellect; a subtle imagination; a subtle process of thought; also, difficult of apprehension; elusive.
  • (superl.) Smooth and deceptive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As a group, the three mammalian proteins resemble bovine serum conglutinin and behave as lectins with rather broad sugar specificities directed at certain non-reducing terminal N-acetylglucosamine, mannose, glucose and fucose residues, but with subtle differences in fine specificities.
  • (2) But it will be a subtle difference, because it's already abundantly clear there's no danger of the war being suddenly forgotten, or made to seem irrelevant to our sense of what Europe and the world has to avoid repeating.
  • (3) Communicating sustainability is a subtle attempt at doing good Read more And yet, in environmental terms it is infinitely preferable to prevent waste altogether, rather than recycle it.
  • (4) If, indeed, there is an immunologic basis for pre-eclampsia, it is more subtle than the methodology used in this study is capable of detecting.
  • (5) Subtle differences between Chicago urban and Grand Forks rural climates are reflected in arthritic subjects' degree of pain and their perception of pain-related stress.
  • (6) Critical in this understanding are the subtle changes that occur in the individual patient, reflecting the natural history of the disease or response to its treatment.
  • (7) Subtle cognitive deficits in Inferential Reading Comprehension were detected when Reading Vocabulary was at or better than a twelfth grade level.
  • (8) This histochemical difference corresponded to more subtle differences in Nissl and myelin staining patterns, and suggests further structural subdivisions of potential functional significance.
  • (9) Thus, luciferase transcriptional fusions can detect subtle variations in initial rates of gene expression in a real-time, nondestructive assay.
  • (10) The binding of [3H]PAF to washed human platelets indicated subtle changes between Days 2 and 4, which became more noticeable by Day 6.
  • (11) In this study the temperature dependence of the reactivity of aldolase SH groups is investigated in order to detect subtle changes in the enzyme conformation.
  • (12) The crucial issue of whether subtle behavioral, intellectual, and developmental impairment occurs in young children, as a result of lead-induced CNS damage is discussed in detail.
  • (13) Historically, what made SNL’s campaign coverage so necessary was its ability to highlight the subtle absurdities of the election and exaggerate the ridiculous.
  • (14) It is believed that by looking at such subtle shape differences an understanding of what it means morphologically for a primate to be either more or less arboreal may be achieved.
  • (15) The current magnetic resonance imaging system with computerized image processing is a sensitive and simple method for evaluation of subtle parenchymal changes of the brain.
  • (16) Fundus examination disclosed a subtle cherry red spot bilaterally.
  • (17) Ependymal cells developed luminal fronds that projected into the ventricle and the subpial glia displayed a very subtle gliosis in the form of thin multi-laminated processes.
  • (18) The rapidity of obtaining the results (within one hour), the complete absence of untoward reactions to the radiopharmaceuticals, the much lower frequency of subtle or indeterminate results, the ability to render useful information in the presence of moderate jaundice and the lack of interference from overlying intestinal contents establishes these radionuclide agents as superior to both radiographic oral and intravenous cholangiography in the investigation of the acute abdomen.
  • (19) Moreover, subtle improvements observed in earlier investigations were not confirmed.
  • (20) Various compounds show subtle but significant differences in blood clearance, excretion, and soft-tissue uptake.