What's the difference between delicate and elegant?

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.

Elegant


Definition:

  • (a.) Very choice, and hence, pleasing to good taste; characterized by grace, propriety, and refinement, and the absence of every thing offensive; exciting admiration and approbation by symmetry, completeness, freedom from blemish, and the like; graceful; tasteful and highly attractive; as, elegant manners; elegant style of composition; an elegant speaker; an elegant structure.
  • (a.) Exercising a nice choice; discriminating beauty or sensitive to beauty; as, elegant taste.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Today, she wears an elegant salmon-pink blouse with white trousers and a long, pale pink coat.
  • (2) Rather than an off-plan Oxshott monster-mansion, he moved his family to an elegant Eaton Terrace townhouse in south-west London.
  • (3) She followed that with a job at Bibendum – she still talks of Simon Hopkinson, "such an elegant cook, so particular and clean and efficient", with deep reverence – and another at Roscoff in Northern Ireland.
  • (4) It's typically sober and elegant, and Cotillard excels in a nervy, vulnerable role.
  • (5) Yet, in spite of this restriction, the 2-mu plasmid of yeast has evolved an elegant mechanism which can allow it to rapidly amplify its copy number without initiating multiple rounds of replication.
  • (6) It is readily expressed as clinical sensitivity and specificity, and elegantly represented by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.
  • (7) And there is plenty of beauty in London - seeing Parliament Square in the snow, the dome of St Paul's rising above the City, the simple perfection of a Georgian terrace or the quietly elegant streets of Mayfair.
  • (8) The portion of my sample prawn orzo was a modest but polished plate of food, the dense bisque and silky grains of pasta elegantly punctuated by small bursts of tart, sweet semi-dried tomato.
  • (9) He believed that western liberal democracy, with its elegant balance of liberty and equality, could not be bettered; that its attainment would lead to a general calming in world affairs; and that in the long run it would be the only credible game in town.
  • (10) Total-Body Scanner is rather an elegant method but a discontinuous one.
  • (11) Foundas also praises Magic's photography, calling its "elegantly choreographed traveling master shots bathed in natural light" a key part of "one of his most beautifully made films."
  • (12) It is the latest in a series of sculpture commissions to occupy the elegant neoclassical galleries, which stretch back 86 metres from the museum's main entrance on the banks of the Thames.
  • (13) Sean Ingle Wimbledon No one has broken Roger Federer’s serve at these championships, let alone taken a set, and the appreciative midsummer murmurs from No1 Court as the seven-times Wimbledon champion elegantly dissected Tommy Robredo suggested they believe he retains the game to win a record eighth title.
  • (14) The intricate wood carving, the elegant furniture, the panelled walls, the grand entrance hall and the cantilevered stairs are undeniably impressive.
  • (15) Whenever I read Philip French's elegant and thoughtful criticism, I felt like I was in the company of someone who not only loved cinema but who felt a sense of responsibility toward it as an art form.
  • (16) It was not an elegant parting, as Christine Bleakley was pushed out by the BBC on Sunday afternoon , leaving ITV to scramble a contract together for her to sign two hours later.
  • (17) It positioned Kelela as a significant new vocalist, her phrasing indebted to pop but somehow elegantly haunting.
  • (18) The unfairly maligned camel is a model of sleek, practical and elegant design compared with the clumsy creature the coalition has produced.
  • (19) The idea that huge, intractable social issues such as sexism and racism could be affected in such simple ways had a powerful intuitive appeal, and hinted at the possibility of equally simple, elegant solutions.
  • (20) The Elegance room – it sounds like a department of Harrods – sets the grand social portraits of Rubens alongside artists they “influenced”.