Word Direct Answers

What does "delicacy" mean?

Delicacy: Nicety or fineness of form, texture, or constitution; softness; elegance; smoothness; tenderness; and hence, frailty or weakness; as, the delicacy of a fiber or a thread; delicacy of a hand or of the human form; delicacy of the skin; delicacy of frame.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Nice propriety of manners or conduct; susceptibility or tenderness of feeling; refinement; fastidiousness; and hence, in an exaggerated sense, effeminacy; as, great delicacy of behavior; delicacy in doing a kindness; delicacy of character that unfits for earnest action. You know your mother's delicacy in this point. Cowper.
  2. 3.Addiction to pleasure; luxury; daintiness; indulgence; luxurious or voluptuous treatment. And to those dainty limbs which Nature lent For gentle usage and soft delicacy Milton.
  3. 4.Nice and refined perception and discrimination; critical niceness; fastidious accuracy. That Augustan delicacy of taste which is the boast of the great public schools of England. Macaulay.
  4. 5.The state of being affected by slight causes; sensitiveness; as, the delicacy of a chemist's balance.
  5. 6.That which is alluring, delicate, or refined; a luxury or pleasure; something pleasant to the senses, especially to the sense of taste; a dainty; as, delicacies of the table. The merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. Rev. xviii.
  6. 7.8. Pleasure; gratification; delight. [Obs.] He Rome brent for his delicacie. Chaucer.

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