(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.
Gossamer
Definition:
(n.) A fine, filmy substance, like cobwebs, floating in the air, in calm, clear weather, especially in autumn. It is seen in stubble fields and on furze or low bushes, and is formed by small spiders.
(n.) Any very thin gauzelike fabric; also, a thin waterproof stuff.
(n.) An outer garment, made of waterproof gossamer.
Example Sentences:
(1) A Gustav Klimt portrait of a beautiful young woman wrapped in folds of white gossamer sold for £24.8m on Wednesday night, one of the highlights of the big-money London auctions.
(2) Dave meanwhile lapsed into his shrill Bullingdon Club persona; the dividing line between self confidence and smugness is gossamer thin for the prime minister.
(3) At the same time, he largely dispensed with his breathless, gossamer sentences, which often teetered on the brink of preciousness and whimsy, and ushered in a style that was much leaner and more sinewy: "Dick!
(4) He may be lithe and louche and blessed with a gossamer touch but he is fearless too, not just decorating this team but driving it on too.
(5) With an illustrious history of materials innovation, Britain is well placed to put this carbon gossamer to work – not least, Cambridge boasts world-leading specialists in the technology of flexible, polymer-based electronics and display screens, one of the areas in which graphene looks most likely to make a mark.
(6) Such is the innate astonishingness of a drama in which historical integrity is hewn from Lego and logic is something to be bummed by one's brother-in-law behind a gossamer curtain (Ye Terry's Fabrics, £3.89 a yarde).
(7) Photograph: Sothebys The beautiful girl swathed in white gossamer was Gertrud Loew, the 19-year-old daughter of Anton Loew, a celebrated physician who ran an opulent private sanatorium beside his palatial home in Vienna, where his patients included the composer Gustav Mahler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
(8) For the Bale money Christian Eriksen has been a lovely, gossamer, wispy little No10 , both oddly peripheral and oddly incisive at the same time.
(9) It’s also put together with a lissom confidence and a breeziness that more than compensates for a gossamer lightness when it comes to substance.” Hail, Caesar!
(10) Silvestre Varela poked home his first Premier League goal at the end of a run from halfway, a simple exchange of passes with Sessègnon enough to bamboozle a Rangers defence in which Richard Dunne twice lost his man, turning and twisting with all the gossamer grace of a fully laden municipal dustcart.
(11) But Malick's wispy, gossamer qualities, his organic, handheld imagery – always seeking wonder in harmony and balance – seem in total opposition to Kubrick's head-on, locked-down fish-eye compositions, his fanatically precise tracking-shots, sudden upsurges of brutal violence and abiding pessimism.
(12) Were a new Clifton bridge to be designed today, it might be a thing of gossamer-thin polymer cables, a spider's web of materials as strong as Atlas, yet entirely free of architectural clothing.
(13) The seven-time former champion is finally able to put the squeeze on Wawrinka, turning the tiebreak his way with a brace of brilliant forehand volleys; the first spun like gossamer, the second punched hard in anger.
(14) Huhne's lawyer argued the case against him was "at best gossamer thin" with no evidence of him having participated in any crime.
(15) 4) While he could say nothing else other than that he "believes rate cut is effective" to then follow it up with "some would say reduction in excess liquidity is due to less fragmentation" and, that the rate cut "reduces fragmentation in the periphery" is pushing on a gossamer thin bit of string, the more so when he continued later with this particular bit of bravado: "fundamentals in the Eurozone are probably strongest in the world", while saying that the recovery is "proceeding, but is weak and fragile".
(16) Kent bundles may be identified at the time of surgery but they appear to be gossamer structures usually destroyed during surgical manipulation of the coronary sulcus.
(17) They were all romancers, metaphysicals, dabblers in literary alchemy determined to spin gossamer filigree out of the apparently unpromising stuff of American life.
(18) The case, Kelsey-Fry had argued at a pre-trial hearing, was "gossamer thin".