Dictionary Definition
subtlety
Noun
1 a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or
attitude; "without understanding the finer nuances you can't enjoy
the humor"; "don't argue about shades of meaning" [syn: nuance, nicety, shade, refinement]
2 the quality of being difficult to detect or
analyze; "you had to admire the subtlety of the distinctions he
drew" [syn: niceness]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
- /ˈsʌtəlti/
Noun
- The quality or fact of being subtle.
- With all his usual subtlety, he quietly fixed the problem before anyone else noticed it.
- An instance of being subtle, a subtle thing, especially a subtle
argument or distinction.
- The subtleties of this overture are often overlooked.
- In the context of "countable|food": An ornate medieval illusion
dish or table decoration, especially when made from one thing but
crafted to look like another.
- At the king's coronation feast, several subtleties were served between main courses.
Translations
quality or act of being subtle
- Italian: sottigliezza
- Japanese: 微妙 (びみょう, bimyō)
- Russian: тонкость (tónkost’)
- Spanish: delicadeza , sutileza
- Swedish: subtilitet
an instance of being subtle
illusion food
- French: entremets
Extensive Definition
A subtlety (also sotelty or soteltie) was an
entertainment dish used in the Middle Ages.
It was a type of entremet used in medieval
England. Among the popular ingredients for subtleties were various
kinds of fowl, especially
peafowl and swans. The birds would often be
plucked and skinned and their meat seasoned, and then baked,
grilled, or boiled; stuffed with fillings of all kinds; and finally
redressed with their own skins. Supported by concealed wooden
struts and decorated with their original plumage, the birds would
be served in lifelike poses. There were also or hunting scenes and similar
tableaux made of sugar.
See also
Notes
References
- Adamson, Melitta Weiss (2004) Food in Medieval Times ISBN 0-313-32147-7
- Strong, Roy (2003) Feast: A History of Grand Eating ISBN 0-7126-6759-8
External links
- How to Cook Medieval - A modern guide on how to make Western European medieval cuisine and subtleties
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Italian hand, absoluteness, accuracy, acquired taste,
acuteness, airiness, airy nothing, animal
cunning, apparent soundness, appreciation, appreciation
of differences, appreciation of excellence, appreciativeness,
art, artfulness, artifice, artistic judgment,
astuteness, attention
to detail, attention to fact, bodilessness, cageyness, callidity, canniness, care for truth,
casuistry, choiceness, circularity, circumstantiality,
civilized taste, civilizedness, cleverness, complexity, complexness, complication, connoisseurship,
conscientiousness,
convolution,
correctness,
crabbedness,
craft, craftiness, critical
niceness, criticality, criticalness, cultivated
taste, cultivation,
culture, cunning, cunningness, daintiness, deceptiveness, delicacy, delicate distinction,
detail, deviousness, differentia, differential,
discriminating taste, discriminatingness,
discrimination,
discriminativeness,
disingenuousness,
distinction,
distortion, elegance, entanglement, equivocalness, equivocation, ethereality, evasive
reasoning, exactingness, exactitude, exactness, excellence, exquisiteness, faithfulness, fallaciousness, fallacy, fastidiousness, faultlessness, feel, feeling, fidelity, fine Italian hand,
fine palate, fine point, fineness, finesse, finicality, finicalness, finickiness, finickingness, flawlessness, flimsiness, foxiness, fussiness, gamesmanship, good taste,
grace, gracefulness, gracility, graciosity, graciousness, guile, guilefulness, hairline, immateriality, impalpability, imponderability,
incorporeality,
ingeniousness,
insidiousness,
insincerity,
insolidity, insubstantiality,
intangibility,
intricacy, intricateness, inventiveness, involution, involvement, jesuitism, jesuitry, judiciousness, literalism, literality, literalness, low cunning,
making distinctions, margin, mathematical precision,
meticulousness,
minuteness, misapplication, mistiness, mystification, narrow
margin, nice distinction, niceness, niceness of
distinction, nicety,
nuance, obfuscation, obscurantism,
one-upmanship, oversubtlety, palate, particle of difference,
particularity,
particularness,
pawkiness, perfection, perplexity, perversion, philosophism, plausibility, plausibleness, point of
difference, polish,
preciseness,
precisianism,
precision, punctiliousness,
punctuality,
quality, ramification, rareness, rarity, rationalization,
readiness, refined
discrimination, refined palate, refinement, resourcefulness,
right, rightness, rigidity, rigidness, rigor, rigorousness, satanic
cunning, scrupulosity, scrupulousness, selectiveness, sense, sensibility, sensitivity, severity, shade of difference,
sharpness, shiftiness, shrewdness, slickness, slightness, slipperiness, slyness, sneakiness, sophism, sophistical reasoning,
sophistication,
sophistry, special
pleading, speciosity,
specious reasoning, speciousness, stealth, stealthiness, strictness, subtility, subtilty, subtle distinction,
subtleness, suppleness, tact, tactfulness, tanglement, taste, tastefulness, technicality, tenuity, tenuousness, textualism, the letter,
thinness, treachery, trickiness, unconcreteness, unreality, unsolidity, unsubstantiality,
unsubstantialness,
vagueness, vicious
circle, vicious reasoning, wariness, wide margin, wiles, wiliness, wit