NICETY

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does nicety mean? 

• NICETY (noun)
  The noun NICETY has 2 senses:

1. conformity with some esthetic standard of correctness or propriety

2. a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude

  Familiarity information: NICETY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NICETY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Conformity with some esthetic standard of correctness or propriety

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

justness; nicety; rightness

Context example:

it was performed with justness and beauty

Hypernyms ("nicety" is a kind of...):

conformance; conformity (correspondence in form or appearance)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

nicety; nuance; refinement; shade; subtlety

Context example:

don't argue about shades of meaning

Hypernyms ("nicety" is a kind of...):

import; meaning; significance; signification (the message that is intended or expressed or signified)

 Context examples 

These gentlemen, after they had a while examined my shape with much nicety, were of different opinions concerning me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Selina says it is quite horror to her—and I believe I have caught a little of her nicety.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

It was a task requiring the utmost nicety and precision, and I could not but admire the way he tempered his strength to the fineness and delicacy of the need.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

It requires great powers, great nicety, to give her playfulness and simplicity without extravagance.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll’s private manufacture; and when I opened one of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

However, when I had brushed my hair very smooth, and put on my black frock—which, Quakerlike as it was, at least had the merit of fitting to a nicety—and adjusted my clean white tucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs. Fairfax, and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with antipathy.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal, and Lady Russell had been less gifted in this part of understanding than her young friend.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)