What's the difference between insidious and subtle?

Insidious


Definition:

  • (a.) Lying in wait; watching an opportunity to insnare or entrap; deceitful; sly; treacherous; -- said of persons; as, the insidious foe.
  • (a.) Intended to entrap; characterized by treachery and deceit; as, insidious arts.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The controversy over the effects of low-level exposure to radiation enhances the perception of radiation as a particularly insidious phenomenon of nature.
  • (2) Meningiomas of the temporal bone are insidious and aggressive lesions.
  • (3) Onset is generally brutal, as in acute enteritis or an extradigestive infection (ENT...) but persists, or else, more often, the syndrome appears insidiously over several days.
  • (4) As the clinical presentation of "catheter infections" is often uncharacteristic and insidious, a definite diagnosis depends on bacteriological examination of the catheter.
  • (5) Seven of these patients had presented with insidious symptoms, seven had serum markers of hepatitis B infection, and the four who were HBsAg positive had relatively lower serum HBsAg concentrations than did those patients who continued with chronic persistent hepatitis.
  • (6) On the other hand, both blunt trauma and posterior stab wounds frequently caused isolated retroperitoneal duodenal lesions where the diagnosis was not evident on admission, but in which the insidious and progressive development of symptoms and signs drew attention to the need for laparotomy.
  • (7) The clinical presentations were similar to other forms of peritonitis complicating PD except for a more insidious onset.
  • (8) A 56-year-old woman developed insidiously progressive, painless weakness of her left hand.
  • (9) Patients with multiple choledochal stones usually presented with insidious onset of painless jaundice, simulating malignant bile duct obstruction, in contrast to the abrupt onset of cholangitis or pain experienced by patients with one to three stones.
  • (10) A 51-year-old female patient, admitted with a chief complaint of dizziness, had bulging of the occipital area, which had started insidiously.
  • (11) A women with longstanding seropositive rheumatoid arthritis presented with the insidious onset of a hyperviscosity syndrome.
  • (12) Respiratory distress may be insidious in onset and must be anticipated.
  • (13) In childhood, scoliosis is usually insidious and is rarely symptomatic.
  • (14) Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, although it is sometimes unrecognized and insidious, is one of the etiologies to be considered.
  • (15) This is incompetent journalism in its most insidious form."
  • (16) The Spurs were missing simple shots but insidiously squirmed their way back into the game, with James returning to Earth and Leonard in fine shooting form.
  • (17) Peritoneal pseudomyxoma has several main features: it is insidious, recurrent, obstinate and severe.
  • (18) Onset of pain was insidious and the symptoms were thought to be related to synovitis due to SLE.
  • (19) Tracheostomy may be a life saving procedure in these circumstances, but delay may prove fatal when its need arises insidiously.
  • (20) The early and precise diagnosis of linitis plastica-type tumours of the rectum and anal canal is difficult because of their insidious presentation and anaplastic nature.

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.