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Subtle   /sˈətəl/   Listen
adjective
Subtile  adj.  
1.
Thin; not dense or gross; rare; as, subtile air; subtile vapor; a subtile medium.
2.
Delicately constituted or constructed; nice; fine; delicate; tenuous; finely woven. "A sotil (subtile) twine's thread." "More subtile web Arachne can not spin." "I do distinguish plain Each subtile line of her immortal face."
3.
Acute; piercing; searching. "The slow disease and subtile pain."
4.
Characterized by nicety of discrimination; discerning; delicate; refined; subtle. (In this sense now commonly written subtle) "The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous, is merely witty." "The subtile influence of an intellect like Emerson's."
5.
Sly; artful; cunning; crafty; subtle; as, a subtile person; a subtile adversary; a subtile scheme. (In this sense now commonly written subtle)
Synonyms: Subtile, Acute. In acute the image is that of a needle's point; in subtile that of a thread spun out to fineness. The acute intellect pierces to its aim; the subtile (or subtle) intellect winds its way through obstacles.


Subtle  adj.  (compar. subtler; superl. subtlest)  
1.
Sly in design; artful; cunning; insinuating; subtile; applied to persons; as, a subtle foe. "A subtle traitor."
2.
Cunningly devised; crafty; treacherous; as, a subtle stratagem.
3.
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. "Things remote from use, obscure and subtle."
4.
Smooth and deceptive. (Obs.) "Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground (bowling ground)."
Synonyms: Artful; crafty; cunning; shrewd; sly; wily. Subtle is the most comprehensive of these epithets and implies the finest intellectual quality. See Shrewd, and Cunning.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Subtle" Quotes from Famous Books



... with the native force which Providence has assigned them. The angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors before him; the lion, the leopard, and the tiger, seek only with their talons and their fangs to gratify their sanguinary fury; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom, and uses the same wiles, as did his sire before the flood. Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery, enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction; arrogates the tremendous weapons ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Southey, whose prose style was the perfection of neatness, and who was intimate with Coleridge throughout his life, laments that it is "extraordinary that he should write in so rambling and inconclusive a manner;" his mind, which was undoubtedly very pliable and subtle, "turning and winding, till you get weary of following ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... smile—how I feast on it! A smile which is always there, yet always fresh through the play of subtle fancy, a speaking smile which makes of the lips a storehouse for thoughts of love and unspoken gratitude, a smile which links present joys to past. For nothing is allowed to drop out of our common life. The smallest works of nature have become part and parcel of our ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... best faculties so general, the manner of expressing a judgment and of exhibiting acquired knowledge should be such as to jar unpleasantly on the sensibilities of Europeans. Where is the real difference? It probably lies in some subtle point of proportion in the psychic chemistry of the Boston mind, but the analyst who shall express the formula is not yet born; though there be those who can cast the spectrum of Boston existence and thought upon their ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... hips, in her voice, her hands, her words, and in the blackness of her abundant hair braided low upon the nape of her slender neck. And this illusion—stronger than the illusion of beauty because more subtle, more tantalisingly inexplicable, caught and held his attention with a vivid ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow


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