What's the difference between elegant and pretty?

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”.

Pretty


Definition:

  • (superl.) Pleasing by delicacy or grace; attracting, but not striking or impressing; of a pleasing and attractive form a color; having slight or diminutive beauty; neat or elegant without elevation or grandeur; pleasingly, but not grandly, conceived or expressed; as, a pretty face; a pretty flower; a pretty poem.
  • (superl.) Moderately large; considerable; as, he had saved a pretty fortune.
  • (superl.) Affectedly nice; foppish; -- used in an ill sense.
  • (superl.) Mean; despicable; contemptible; -- used ironically; as, a pretty trick; a pretty fellow.
  • (superl.) Stout; strong and brave; intrepid; valiant.
  • (adv.) In some degree; moderately; considerably; rather; almost; -- less emphatic than very; as, I am pretty sure of the fact; pretty cold weather.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As a Native American I am pretty sensitive to charges of racism and white supremacy,” the Oklahoma congressman added.
  • (2) Not making a sound for 24 hours pretty nearly killed me.
  • (3) The conclusion is to warn the orthopaedic surgeons to look carefully what model is behind the pretty coloured results.
  • (4) It may unsettle Exxon Mobil a little but they are pretty experienced now and I don’t think they would derail anything,” she said.
  • (5) United and West Ham are on similar runs and can feel pretty happy about themselves but are not as confident away from home as they are at home and that will have to change if they are to make ground on the top teams.
  • (6) When you hear the name Jesus, is the first image that comes to mind a dewy-eyed pretty boy with flowing locks?
  • (7) We’ve got a lot of work to do but I’m feeling pretty confident.
  • (8) Some offer a range, depending on whether you think you're a bit of a buff, and know a pinot meunier from a pinot noir and what prestige cuvée actually means or you just want to see a bit of the process and have a nice glass of bubbly at the end of it, before moving on to the next place – touring a pretty corner of France getting slowly, and delightfully, fizzled.
  • (9) No one condones what happened in the 70s, but I think this is pretty appalling."
  • (10) Which is good news for anyone who likes this kind of thing (which is, let's face it, pretty much everyone.
  • (11) Woodall added: “Pretty much everything [is a potential source for what we found].
  • (12) There's no doubt Twitter is, for those who are into that kind of thing, a first-class social networking medium (the proof: pretty much every other social networking site, including Facebook, has tried to buy it and, having failed, adopted a whole raft of blatantly Twitter-like features of their own).
  • (13) Pretty much every major toy brand, as well as apps like Angry Birds and Talking Friends, are spawning “webisodes” on YouTube as well as traditional ads, which often sit side-by-side within the same channel.
  • (14) She said the UK law on assisted suicide infringed Pretty's human rights, under article two of the European convention – the right to life.
  • (15) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Terms and Conditions May Apply – trailer It’s pretty simple, really.
  • (16) Parties are a tedious chore, while sponsorships are pretty tiresome too: can you remember the key messaging about that motor oil you agreed to plug to the nearest reporter?
  • (17) Chelsea might recover under similar circumstances, but I reckon they need a pretty big overhaul.
  • (18) I’ve seen Ukip both at home and abroad, and I’m sorry to say they’re pretty amateur.
  • (19) "I have always been of the view that it is a false dichotomy, and one that is pretty much built-in by our education system unfortunately," he said this weekend.
  • (20) Facebook Twitter Pinterest A bus belching smoke in Bogotá Pretty dirty.