GRACEFUL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does graceful mean? 

• GRACEFUL (adjective)
  The adjective GRACEFUL has 2 senses:

1. characterized by beauty of movement, style, form, or execution

2. suggesting taste, ease, and wealth

  Familiarity information: GRACEFUL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GRACEFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characterized by beauty of movement, style, form, or execution

Similar:

elegant (displaying effortless beauty and simplicity in movement or execution)

fluent; fluid; liquid; smooth (smooth and unconstrained in movement)

gainly (graceful and pleasing)

gracile; willowy (slender and graceful)

lissom; lissome; lithe; lithesome; sinuous; supple (gracefully thin and bending and moving with ease)

Also:

beautiful (delighting the senses or exciting intellectual or emotional admiration)

elegant (refined and tasteful in appearance or behavior or style)

Antonym:

awkward (lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance)

Derivation:

gracefulness (beautiful carriage)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Suggesting taste, ease, and wealth

Synonyms:

elegant; graceful; refined

Similar:

gracious (characterized by charm, good taste, and generosity of spirit)

 Context examples 

His eyes delighted in the graceful lines of it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

If I can't, I shall fall into a chair and be graceful.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

It is not bon ton to be learned, but it is a graceful thing to indicate that you have forgotten a good deal.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The noble bust, the sloping shoulders, the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;—but her face?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I could not see her clearly enough to know more than that she was tall and graceful, with black hair, and clad in some sort of loose white gown.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was a queenly presence—tall, graceful, and intensely womanly.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They were permitted to go alone; and with a cordial nod from one, and a graceful bow from the other, the two gentlemen took leave.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Lady Middleton was not more than six or seven and twenty; her face was handsome, her figure tall and striking, and her address graceful.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

His staff in one hand and his scrip in the other, with springy step and floating locks, he raced along the forest path, as active and as graceful as a young deer.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)