(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.
Filigree
Definition:
(n.) Ornamental work, formerly with grains or breads, but now composed of fine wire and used chiefly in decorating gold and silver to which the wire is soldered, being arranged in designs frequently of a delicate and intricate arabesque pattern.
(a.) Relating to, composed of, or resembling, work in filigree; as, a filigree basket. Hence: Fanciful; unsubstantial; merely decorative.
Example Sentences:
(1) The invaginations were classified into four easily recognized types: regular, chunky, filigree, and ridge (present only in axon hillock regions).
(2) Nestling beneath the craggy wall of Fort Saint-Jean, a 17th-century stronghold that once housed the Foreign Legion, the squat glass building is shielded from the harsh Mediterranean sun by a dark filigree veil.
(3) (An early profile described his secretary as "a busty hippy in a skintight, purple mini-dress, with filigreed white stockings, lace-up boots and funkily mismatched earrings".
(4) In front of them is a cedarwood box on a plinth covered with silver nickel filigree work and a plaque in the shape of the Wu-Tang Clan’s batlike logo, which the RZA calls “the illest album cover in the word”.
(5) Many are more than a century old, their age written in the fading colours, filigrees of damp, and decades of creeping mould that envelop most exteriors.
(6) She is a subtle filigree of implicit contradictions, because although we like our stereotypes, we like the tensions better as long as they are unobtrusive and of little consequence – that is, they don’t get in the way of her being and doing what we expect of her.
(7) Glial invaginations into neurons are of four different kinds: regular, chunky, filigree, and ridge (found only at axon hillocks).
(8) She knows exactly what she wants: a particular antique amber bracelet, set in elaborate silver filigree.
(9) The cancellous bone structure has a filigree appearance which is also recognizable by the glass-like appearance on radiographs.
(10) In the framework of this model, protamine phosphorylation appears to promote formation of DNA interstrand links yielding a very pronounced filigree structure.
(11) As the singer traces the delicate filigree of her song, elderly men in spotless white dhotis sway their heads in fierce concentration, and even the children cease to fidget.
(12) As in other sites, we categorized the dominant histologic pattern as diffuse or filigree, the latter carrying a more unfavorable prognosis.
(13) The academy like to give Oscars to villains but prefers them to be entirely fictional, to eat the scenery, or have a wisecrack or two up their sleeve – think Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lecter, Heath Ledger’s Joker, or Christoph Waltz’s Nazi in Inglorious Basterds, whereas Ralph Fiennes’s filigree turn as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List went unrewarded.
(14) They were all romancers, metaphysicals, dabblers in literary alchemy determined to spin gossamer filigree out of the apparently unpromising stuff of American life.
(15) It's hard to escape the circle in Birmingham's new £189m library , due to open on Tuesday next week, which towers 10 storeys above Centenary Square as a gigantic stack of boxes, wrapped in a filigree skin of metal loops.