All 11 Uses of

delicacy
in
Middlemarch

Certainly, if falling in love had been at all in question, it would have been quite safe with a creature like this Miss Vincy, who had just the kind of intelligence one would desire in a woman—polished, refined, docile, lending itself to finish in all the delicacies of life, and enshrined in a body which expressed this with a force of demonstration that excluded the need for other evidence.†
Chpt 2 *

delicacies = things that are rare or expensive -- usually prized foods

I am-therefore bound to fulfil the expectation so raised," said Mr. Casaubon, putting his conduct in the light of mere rectitude: a trait of delicacy which Dorothea noticed with admiration.†
Chpt 1

Lydgate divined some delicacy of feeling here, but did not half understand it.†
Chpt 2

That, entering into Lydgate's position as a new-comer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr. Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, which Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to.†
Chpt 2

She was of the same curly-haired, square-faced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more delicacy of feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a remarkable firmness of glance.†
Chpt 3

He fled by another doorway, but Mr. Jonah, who had not before seen Fred's white complexion, long legs, and pinched delicacy of face, prepared many sarcasms in which these points of appearance were wittily combined with the lowest moral attributes.†
Chpt 3

Mr. Farebrother used to say "Mary" instead of "Miss Garth," but it was part of his delicacy to treat her with the more deference because, according to Mrs. Vincy's phrase, she worked for her bread.†
Chpt 4

James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he was mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said.†
Chpt 6

Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion to the delicacy of their systems.†
Chpt 8

A man so marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have forbidden her from seeing him again—who takes her out of her proper rank—into poverty—has the meanness to accept such a sacrifice—has always had an objectionable position—a bad origin—and, I believe, is a man of little principle and light character.†
Chpt 8

Definitions:

(1) (delicacy as in: eat the delicacy)
something that is rare or expensive -- usually a prized food
(2) (delicacy as in: discuss with delicacy)
care and gentleness -- especially speaking or acting with sensitivity and tact
(3) (delicacy as in: offend her delicacy)
the quality of being easily hurt or damaged

(often referring to the fragility of someone's emotional well being when it is easily distressed by something that is offensive or disturbing)
(4) (delicacy as in: delicacy of the brushwork)
pleasant subtlety or fineness
(5) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus