subtlety

1. 1.

   a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude

   “without understanding the finer nuances you can't enjoy the humor”

   “don't argue about shades of meaning”

   Synonymsnuancenicetyshaderefinement

   Broadermeaning
2. 2.

   the quality of being difficult to detect or analyze

   “you had to admire the subtlety of the distinctions he drew”

   Synonymsniceness

   Broaderdifficulty

Other forms of subtlety

plural

subtleties·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about subtlety

What does subtlety mean?

subtlety means "a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in subtlety?

subtlety has 3 syllables: subt-le-ty. The stress falls on "subt". In IPA it is /ˈsʌtəlti/.

What is another word for subtlety?

Close synonyms include nuance, nicety, shade, refinement, niceness. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is subtlety a common word?

subtlety is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.