All 5 Uses of
delicacy
in
The House of Mirth
- She had often heard of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy.†
Chpt 1.7 *indelicacy = lacking sensitivity or tactstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in indelicacy means not and reverses the meaning of delicacy. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was aware of Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the persons least likely to be encumbered by them.†
Chpt 1.8 *delicacies = things that are rare or expensive -- usually prized foods
- But she was growing less sensitive on such points: a hard glaze of indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more.†
Chpt 2.5
- In the words preceding it she had conjectured, at most, an allusion to her supposed influence over George Dorset; nor did the astonishing indelicacy of the reference diminish the likelihood of Rosedale's resorting to it.†
Chpt 2.7indelicacy = lacking sensitivity or tactstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in indelicacy means not and reverses the meaning of delicacy. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- It was as though the sense in her of unexplained scruples and resistances had the same attraction as the delicacy of feature, the fastidiousness of manner, which gave her an external rarity, an air of being impossible to match.†
Chpt 2.11
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