subtle
Speech parts
1. subtle - Adjective
3. subtle - Adjective Satellite
Meaning
Sly in design; artful; cunning; insinuating; subtile; -- applied to persons; as, a subtle foe.
Cunningly devised; crafty; treacherous; as, a subtle stratagem.
Characterized by refinement and niceness in drawing distinctions; nicely discriminating; -- said of persons; as, a subtle logician; refined; tenuous; sinuous; insinuating; hence, penetrative or pervasive; -- said of the mind; its faculties, or its operations; as, a subtle intellect; a subtle imagination; a subtle process of thought; also, difficult of apprehension; elusive.
Smooth and deceptive.
Source: Webster's dictionarySynonyms
Antonyms
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Examples
Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things.
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.
It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.
In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.