Need another word that means the same as “subtlety”? Find 53 synonyms and 30 related words for “subtlety” in this overview.
The synonyms of “Subtlety” are: niceness, nicety, nuance, refinement, shade, delicacy, elusiveness, faintness, astuteness, keenness, acuteness, fineness, sharpness, shrewdness, perceptiveness, perception, discernment, sensitivity, discrimination, penetration, percipience, perspicacity, perspicuity, acuity, sagacity, wisdom, cleverness, intelligence, skill, artfulness, dexterity, brightness, finesse, ingenuity, expertise, adroitness, complexity, intricacy, cunning, guile, craftiness, wiliness, deviousness, precision, preciseness, detail, slightness, minuteness, narrowness, tenuousness, indistinctness, indefiniteness, lack of definition
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, “subtlety” as a noun can have the following definitions:
acuity | A quick and penetrating intelligence. Visual acuity. |
acuteness | Very hard native crystalline carbon valued as a gem. He argued with great acuteness. |
adroitness | Skillful performance or ability without difficulty. He lacks political adroitness. |
artfulness | The quality of being adroit in taking unfair advantage. |
astuteness | Intelligence manifested by being astute (as in business dealings. |
brightness | The quality of being intelligent and quick-witted. His mother called to him from the brightness of the kitchen. |
cleverness | The property of being ingenious. The cleverness of her strategy. |
complexity | The state or quality of being intricate or complicated. An issue of great complexity. |
craftiness | A steep rugged rock or cliff. |
cunning | Skill in achieving one’s ends by deceit. What resources of energy and cunning it took just to survive. |
delicacy | Accuracy of perception; sensitiveness. I have to treat this matter with the utmost delicacy. |
detail | Extended treatment of particulars. A detail was sent to remove the fallen trees. |
deviousness | The quality of being oblique and rambling indirectly. |
dexterity | Skill in performing tasks, especially with the hands. Her dexterity with chopsticks. |
discernment | The ability to judge well. A man of discernment. |
discrimination | The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability. Discrimination between right and wrong. |
elusiveness | The quality of being difficult to grasp or pin down. The author s elusiveness may at times be construed as evasiveness. |
expertise | Skillfulness by virtue of possessing special knowledge. Technical expertise. |
faintness | A feeling of faintness and of being ready to swoon. Faintness of heart and infirmity of purpose. |
fineness | The property of being very narrow or thin. The fineness of her features. |
finesse | Subtly skillful handling of a situation. Orchestral playing of great finesse. |
guile | The use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them. He used all his guile and guts to free himself from the muddle he was in. |
indefiniteness | The quality of being vague and poorly defined. |
indistinctness | The quality of being indistinct and without sharp outlines. |
ingenuity | The quality of being clever, original, and inventive. The ingenuity of Haydn s scoring. |
intelligence | A unit responsible for gathering and interpreting information about an enemy. Extraterrestrial intelligences. |
intricacy | The quality of being intricate. The intricacy of the procedure. |
keenness | A positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something. I admired the keenness of his mind. |
lack of definition | The state of needing something that is absent or unavailable. |
minuteness | The property of being very small in size. He examined the essay with the greatest minuteness. |
narrowness | A narrow strait connecting two bodies of water. Narrowness of vision and understanding. |
niceness | The quality of being nice; pleasantness. Her sheer niceness won her many friends. |
nicety | Accuracy or precision. She prided herself on her nicety of pronunciation. |
nuance | A subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound. Without understanding the finer nuances you can t enjoy the humor. |
perception | The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. He wouldn t have accepted said my mother with unusual perception. |
perceptiveness | A feeling of understanding. |
percipience | The quality of having sensitive insight or understanding; perceptiveness. Age has not impaired his percipience. |
perspicacity | The capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions. The perspicacity of her remarks. |
perspicuity | Clarity as a consequence of being perspicuous. |
preciseness | Clarity as a consequence of precision. He handled it with the preciseness of an automaton. |
precision | Refinement in a measurement, calculation, or specification, especially as represented by the number of digits given. A precision of six decimal figures. |
refinement | Cultured elegance in behaviour or manner. I admired the exquisite refinement of his prose. |
sagacity | The quality of being sagacious. A man of great political sagacity. |
sensitivity | Sensitivity to emotional feelings of self and others. A galvanometer of extreme sensitivity. |
shade | A lampshade. Various shades of blue. |
sharpness | A strong odor or taste property. The sharpness of her loss. |
shrewdness | The quality of having or showing good powers of judgement. He is a man of some tactical shrewdness. |
skill | Ability to produce solutions in some problem domain. The skills of cookery. |
slightness | Smallness of stature. |
tenuousness | The right to hold property; part of an ancient hierarchical system of holding lands. |
wiliness | A hypothetical subatomic particle of large mass that interacts weakly with ordinary matter through gravitation; postulated as a constituent of the dark matter of the universe. |
wisdom | An Apocryphal book consisting mainly of a meditation on wisdom although ascribed to Solomon it was probably written in the first century BC. Eastern wisdom. |
abstruse | Difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge. An abstruse philosophical inquiry. |
ambiguous | Having more than one possible meaning. Ambiguous words. |
ambiguously | So as to be open to doubt or uncertainty. This letter is worded ambiguously. |
ambivalent | Uncertain or unable to decide about what course to follow. Was ambivalent about having children. |
blur | Make unclear indistinct or blurred. In front of him the page blurred. |
blurred | Indistinct or hazy in outline. Blurred vision. |
complexity | A factor involved in a complicated process or situation. He enjoyed the complexity of modern computers. |
convoluted | Intricately folded, twisted, or coiled. Convoluted legal language. |
esoteric | Confined to and understandable by only an enlightened inner circle. A compilation of esoteric philosophical theories. |
faint | (of a sight, smell, or sound) barely perceptible. The fires were fainting there. |
hazy | Indistinct or hazy in outline. It was a beautiful day but quite hazy. |
illegibility | The quality of writing (print or handwriting) that cannot be deciphered. |
imprecision | The quality of lacking precision. All scientific measurements come with some degree of imprecision. |
inconspicuous | Not clearly visible or attracting attention. He pushed the string through an inconspicuous hole. |
indefinite | Not clearly expressed or defined; vague. Must you be so indefinite. |
indeterminate | Not exactly known, established, or defined. An indeterminate stem. |
indistinct | Not clear or sharply defined. His speech was slurred and indistinct. |
intricacy | The quality of being intricate. The intricacy of the procedure. |
intricate | Very complicated or detailed. An intricate network of canals. |
noncommittal | Refusing to bind oneself to a particular course of action or view or the like. Her boyfriend was noncommittal about their future together. |
nuance | Give nuances to. He was familiar with the nuances of the local dialect. |
obscure | Make obscure or unclear. The debate has become obscured by conflicting ideological perspectives. |
puzzling | Not clear to the understanding. A puzzling statement. |
recondite | Difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge. Some recondite problem in historiography. |
subtle | (of a mixture or effect) delicately complex and understated. The subtle fiend dissembled. |
trivia | Details, considerations, or pieces of information of little importance or value. We fill our days with meaningless trivia. |
uncertain | Not consistent or dependable. She spoke in no uncertain terms. |
unclear | Not obvious or definite; ambiguous. The reason for their actions is unclear to this day. |
vague | Thinking or communicating in an unfocused or imprecise way. Vague forms of speech have so long passed for mysteries of science. |
wispy | Thin and weak. A few wispy memories of childhood. |
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