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Nicety   Listen
noun
Nicety  n.  (pl. niceties)  
1.
The quality or state of being nice (in any of the senses of that word.). "The miller smiled of her nicety."
2.
Delicacy or exactness of perception; minuteness of observation or of discrimination; precision.
3.
A delicate expression, act, mode of treatment, distinction, or the like; a minute distinction. "The fineness and niceties of words."
To a nicety, with great exactness or accuracy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nicety" Quotes from Famous Books



... Army wish to illustrate its shortcomings, they could find a biting satire ready-made by the children of Under Town. A fat small boy comes round here, who has attentively studied the meetings; who can copy the canting, up-and-down, gentle-explosive, the Behold I am saved, ye sinners! tone to a nicety. He marches at the head of a band of serious infants who bear rags, tied to sticks and parasols, as banners. Every now and then he circles them to a standstill for an harangue about blood, fire and Jesus. (It is the gory part which delights him.) Then the procession re-forms, imitating brass instruments ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... from him such a memento. The style, perhaps, is as familiar as it was ever his habit to indulge in; and it shows how impossible it was for him, even on the most temporary summons, to dispense with his usual regularity of expression or with any logical nicety of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... observations on Shakespeare had been published by Mr. Upton, a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste. Many of his explanations are curious and useful, but he likewise, though he professed to oppose the licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill seconded by his skill. Every ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... on his performance. There is a little the same sort of pleasure in watching the skillful handling of a rod that there is in watching the bow-action of a violinist. Both things demand the utmost nicety of adjustment: body, arm, wrist, fingers uniting in an interplay of efficiency exactly adapted to the intricately shifting needs ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... open space containing about sixty acres, and in the middle of the vast square was the farm house belonging to Mr. Wright. It was quite a respectable building, two stories high, with flat roof, and constructed entirely of rough logs, yet fitted together with considerable pretensions to skill and nicety. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... a great proportion of them are, after long ill-usage, taught to answer these false indications, in the same way that a carthorse is brought to turn right or left by the touch of the whip on the opposite side of the neck, or the word of the driver; and indeed such is the nicety to which it may be brought, that you constantly hear people boast that their horses will "turn by the weight of the reins on the neck." This, however, only proves the docility of the horse, and how badly ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood

... was honest at least in his desire for a permanent residence in an up-to-date penitentiary, for, even as the deed itself had been accomplished with a precision that was almost automatic, so did the work yet to be done go off with the nicety of a well-regulated schedule. Everything came about as Holmes had predicted, even to the action of the police in endeavoring to fasten the crime upon an inoffensive and somewhat impecunious social ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... acids, or other corrosive liquors, cannot have access, otherwise the steel will rust, and the accuracy of the balance be destroyed. I have three sets, of different sizes, made by Mr Fontin with the utmost nicety, and, excepting those made by Mr Ramsden of London, I do not think any can compare with them for precision and sensibility. The largest of these is about three feet long in the beam for large weights, up to fifteen ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... triglyphs between them were considered of the greatest importance. The exquisite drapery of caryatids and canephorae, no English artist, a hundred years ago, thought fit to imitate; but the cornices which they supposed were measured inch by inch with the utmost nicety. Ingenious devices were invented for enabling the artificer to reproduce, by a series of complicated curves, the profile of a Doric capital, which probably owed its form to the steady hand and uncontrolled taste of the designer. To put faith in many of the theories propounded by architectural ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... four weeks there was a grand ball at court in honor of H. H. the Prince of Dummerland and his Princess, and THEN I determined I would come out in public. I dressed myself with unusual care and splendor. My hair was curled and my moustache dyed to a nicety; and of the four hundred gentlemen present, if the girls of Kalbsbraten DID select one who wore an English hussar uniform, why should I disguise the fact? In spite of my silence, the news had somehow got abroad, as news will in such small towns,—Herr von ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... I plied my brains in vain for that becoming fault. It was the same whether I considered her beauty, her heart, or her mind. A charming old Italian writer has laid down the canons of perfect feminine beauty with much nicety in a delicious discourse, which, as he delivered it in a sixteenth-century Florentine garden to an audience of beautiful and noble ladies, an audience not too large to be intimate and not too small to be ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... erstwhile host ben Nazir had understood a little German after all. More likely he had divined Abdul Ali's purpose to make use of me. Certainly he had poured the proper poison in Anazeh's ear, and the old man understood my value to a nicety. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... either invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinction between formal and essential truth. Of his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is even vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is not a hair upon his body but confesses ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with great gravity made a savage lunge at the counterfeit presentment of William Shakespeare, who parried his blow without moving from where he stood. Thereupon the lithe, well-built young fellow teetered his foil in the air, and with great nicety pinked his fat antagonist in the stomach, selecting a gilt band just above his sash ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an enchanted circle, having insuperable and impenetrable walls of foliage, a roof of ultramarine satin, and no floor—the keel balancing itself with admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark which, by some accident having been turned upside down, floated in constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of sustaining it. The channel now became a gorge—although the term is somewhat inapplicable, and I employ it merely because ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... but she knew it was there, felt it even before she noticed the double stamping and breathing of the animals. Her keen senses seemed to make the whole surrounding landscape visible to her without the moving of a muscle. She knew to a nicety exactly how her weapons lay, and what movement would bring her hand to the trigger of her ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... indeed this was proved by the ease with which she appeared to glide along the surface of, rather than through, the water, her progress being marked by singularly little disturbance of the element, considering her very high rate of speed. Her sails were magnificently cut, setting to a nicety, and drawing to perfection, and they were white enough to have graced the spars of a yacht. I noticed, too, that the inside of the bulwarks, her deck-fittings, brass-work, and guns, were all scrupulously clean and bright, while every rope was ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... The different destinies of mankind are balanced with terrible nicety. The scale of life which sinks here will rise there, and that which rises here will sink there. What was here temporary affliction will there be eternal triumph; and what here was temporary triumph will there ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... pleasing buildings to our modern London, had not yet budded. Nor would it ever at any time of his life have thoroughly responded to Leighton's taste. So long as he could detect a defect he was dissatisfied, and extreme nicety is not what the Dutch style pretends to. It depends upon a picturesque combination of forms of no great refinement in themselves, but which give a varied skyline and a pretty play of light and shade. It amuses at the first glance, and as it rarely demands a second, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... he put bravely at the steep bank, and clambered up with the coolness of one who rode well to hounds. He gained the top, and served as a rallying-point for the shattered remnant of his regiment, which there quickly re-formed with as much coolness and fastidious nicety as on a ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... be present with His sacrament, inasmuch as He is alway with His people to the end of time. But as I am not skilful in matters of such nicety, I would ask of this reverend casuist, who is more able to answer in questions of such weight than I; who am, as I said before, unlearned in disputed points; and truly I am in nothing more wishful than to come at a right knowledge and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... rustle, a smell of sandal-wood in the air. The next moment Madam Le Baron stood before us. A slender figure, about my own height, in a quaint, old-fashioned dress; snowy hair, arranged in puff on puff, with exquisite nicety; the darkest, softest eyes I ever saw, and a general air of having left her crown in the next room; this was the ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... Finish Like Jewelers!'—so the old Egyptians wrote over the portals of their palaces and temples. I like to think that the most gigantic task ever attempted on this planet—the work of the world's redemption—was finished with a precision and a nicety that no ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... with how much nicety and attention does she help the chick to break its prison? Not to take notice of her covering it from the injuries of the weather, providing it proper nourishment, and teaching it to help itself; nor to mention her forsaking the nest, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... Russia, by land and by water, and has calculated her resources to a nicety. German spies are legion in Russia as they are in France. She may hope to make easy-going people like us believe that she is on the best of terms with our ally, but she will find it far more difficult to make Russia herself believe it. One has only to study the Russian Press to be ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... wine might probably have taught her himself after too large potations of his own spirituous manufactories. I was ushered into a small parlour—where sat, sipping brandy and water, a short, stout, monosyllabic sort of figure, corresponding in outward shape to the name of Briggs—even unto a very nicety. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... retained them between her mandibles. It will be understood, I suppose, that we did not see the food in its passage from one bird to the other,—human eyesight would hardly be equal to work of such nicety; but the two bills were put together so frequently and in so pronounced a manner as to leave us in no practical uncertainty about what was going on. Neither had I any doubt that the change was connected ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... brilliant,—so brilliant that I could not gaze steadily into it, though I tried; and his lips, which were very thin, seemed more like polished marble than human flesh. His dress was black throughout, and not only set with exact nicety, but was scrupulously ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... stood watching half-witted Turk Smollet, who was pushing a wheelbarrow in the road. The old man with his absurdly boyish mind had a dozen long boards on the wheelbarrow, and, as he hurried along the road, balanced the load with extreme nicety. "Easy there, Turk! Steady now, old boy!" the old man shouted to himself, and laughed so that the ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... to the kitchen to drink coffee. There was no time to wait for any nicety of service. They stood outside the window and the cook passed them their coffee and a roll, which they drank and ate from the window-sill. Edna ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... is character-painting. This portraiture is accomplished with remarkable skill, the traits both individual and national being marked with great nicety without ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... none the worse as regarded his official duties. Mr. Blow did not want the services of a wife in discovering and reporting all the secrets of the Belgium iron trade. There was no intricacy in that, no nicety. There was much of what, in his lighter moments, Mr. Anderson called "sweat." He did not pretend to much capacity for such duties; but in his own peculiar walk he thought that he was great. But it was very fatiguing, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... quarters. I only hope that it will not discourage those who accompanied you to the altar, and shared your enthusiasm at the time." He had spoken throughout with studied slowness and an insolent nicety of utterance. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... the open door, Birnier stroked his shaven chin perplexedly with the other. He glanced from the sergeant, standing rigidly by the table, to the lieutenant engaged in stoking his cigar to a nicety. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... adds strength to business persuasion—Secret of the ability to use tactful and vivid words in business—Essential training necessary to the nice use of words—Business success depends upon nicety and tact more than on ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... is often not without his charm. He knows, if not courts and princes, at least hotels and railway companies. He is on terms of easy familiarity with every 'boots' in several counties. He can calculate to a nicety how long a train is likely to be delayed by a fair 'somewhere along the line.' He is also full of information about local politics. In Connaught, for instance, an experienced member of the profession ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... delicate, that I cannot bear the apprehension of another's prying into those delightful endearments with which the warm imagination of a lover will sometimes indulge him, and which I suspect my eyes then betray. To fear this discovery of our thoughts may perhaps appear too ridiculous a nicety to minds not susceptible of all the tendernesses of this delicate passion. And surely we shall suspect there are few such, when we consider that it requires every human virtue to exert itself in its full extent; since the beloved, whose happiness it ultimately ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... instructions with zealous nicety; then he observed, smilingly, to the grisette, "Oh, Miss Dimpleton, I must not be your femme de chambre—there is danger ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... you with much! Though not adjusted with nicety, at least you are strongly built. I wonder whether you were born a bear or whether you have come to it through your rustic life, with its tilling of crops and its trading with peasants? Yet no; I believe that, even if you had received a fashionable education, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... agile, quick in his movements, graceful, neat to nicety in his dress, with much in his air of what is called style, with a face almost too beautiful for a man's, had not his eyes commanded it and all who looked at it, and his close, firm mouth been ready to say what the fiery spirit might bid; his eyes, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... considerations slip away from him; he vowed that his chief longing, his most passionate desire, was to marry her—to make her his and his only; and that nothing but a chivalric sense of the wrong he might be doing her future had made him hesitate. And then he eloquently praised himself for such a nicety of honour, and tried to make her understand how really noble he had been in his self-denial, and how hard it was for him to be accused of the very thing he was trying to avoid. And he looked so injured, with his beautiful eyes full of tears, that Denas was privately ashamed of herself, and fearful ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... used more for ascertaining relatively large differences in altitudes than for purposes where any great nicety is required. For hills under 2000 ft., the following rule will give a very close approximation, and is easily remembered, because 55 degrees, the assumed temperature, agrees with 55 degrees, the significant figures in the 55,000 factor, while the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... mimicry,—for making a mask out of his physiognomy, so that he can always look as if he really were what he pretends to be; and since he makes his calculations always within the lines of his individual nature, the appearance he puts on suits him to a nicety, and its effect is extremely deceptive. He dons his mask whenever his object is to flatter himself into some one's good opinion; and you may pay just as much attention to it as if it were made of wax or cardboard, never ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... two predecessors, realized the new form better than any one before him had done. For he possessed the special gifts necessary to the performance of the task. He possessed, in the first place, a miraculous power of musical characterization. Through the representative nicety of his themes, through his inordinate capacity for thematic variation and transformation, his playful and witty and colorful instrumentation, Strauss was able to impart to his music a concreteness and descriptiveness and realism hitherto ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... askance; while Mrs. Pennypoker, directly behind them, watched them both with an unswerving vigilance, ready to check any sign of levity on the part of man or maid. Mrs. Pennypoker was attired with all her wonted nicety, and her prim black straw bonnet and decorous gloves formed a striking contrast to the plain rough-and-ready gowns and broad hats of the other matrons, who were more accustomed to the needs of the ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... was afterwards finished off in the same way, although more planking was employed as greater nicety of detail was necessary in order to arrange for the doorway and windows, for which latter the remains of the cabin sky-light Frank thought of bringing ashore supplied the material; but it took a couple of days to complete the building to the satisfaction of Ben and Mr Meldrum, notwithstanding ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... sense of balance was beginning to come to her. Such a tiny movement of the wheel sent the car to right or left; at first she had jerked it clumsily, now she could reckon the proportion with greater nicety. Was that something coming in the distance? "Sound your hooter!" shouted Aunt Harriet quickly, as a motor cycle hove in sight. In rather a panic, Winona squeezed the india-rubber bulb, making the car lurch ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... General Menou, was constrained to agree to the evacuation of Egypt by his troops, which were to be sent back to France on English vessels. This event had been expected by Bonaparte, and the secret instruction which he forwarded to Otto at London shows the nicety of his calculation as to the advantages to be reaped by France owing to her receiving the news while it was still unknown in England. He ordered Otto to fix October the 2nd for the close of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... oil, (cost one cent,) and one gill of water, or a quantity sufficient to make a thick batter; just as you are ready to use it, beat the white of the egg, and stir it into the batter; the cost will be three or four cents, and the use of it will double the size and nicety of ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson

... prescribed for him to do, how he was doing it, and concluding with a most clear and intelligible exegesis of the resumption act; what it was, its intent, purpose and meaning; and with convincing nicety and clearness, and evident satisfactoriness, was his explanation given, that he was frequently interrupted by spontaneous applause from the crowd. He told how the credit of the country was advancing as we near the solid foundation of hard money; ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... of all the rest, and, in a young calf, is easily extracted with the knife. Many like the eye, which you must cut out with the point of your knife, and divide in two. Under the head is the palate, which is reckoned a nicety. ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... going under; the offices in the gift of the President might very well be reckoned on to supply the beef which should lead by their noses the weary expectants whose hunger might be too strong for their nicety of stomach; and the pinch of salt,—why could not that be found in the handful of Republicans who might be drawn over by love of notoriety, private disgusts, or that mixture of motives which has none of the substance of opinion, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... have softened these blemishes where I found them. But I am determined to report everything just as it is, or at least just as it appears to me; and those who have a curiosity to see courts and courtiers dissected, must bear with the dirt they find in laying open such minds with as little nicety and as much patience as, in a dissection of their bodies, if they wanted to see that operation, they must submit ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... these applied to 36-inch globes, instead of the engraved meridians, make a difference of ten guineas in their price. For furniture they are not so beautiful; for use they are quite as valuable. There is only one other process which requires great nicety. The axis of the globe revolves on the meridian ring, and of course it is absolutely necessary that the poles should be exactly parallel. This is effected by a little machine which drills each extremity at one and the same instant; and the operation ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... austereness of my life, 155 My vouch against you, and my place i' the state, Will so your accusation overweigh, That you shall stifle in your own report, And smell of calumny. I have begun; And now I give my sensual race the rein: 160 Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite; Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes, That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother By yielding up thy body to my will; Or else he must not only die the death, 165 But thy unkindness shall his death draw out To lingering sufferance. Answer ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... be inclined to think, that there was a nicety in the sense and application of the word decus, amongst the Romans, with which we are unacquainted, and that, in the passages now adduced, it was understood to refer to the honour of the emperor's patronage, obtained through the means of Mecaenas; ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... incident, and as he no doubt will do in others; for he may bluff hard, but it will take a great deal to make him fight. There is one matter upon which Mr. Kruger's judgment is perfect: he can judge the 'breaking strain' to a nicety. He climbs down, but he is not beaten; for as surely as the dammed stream will seek its outlet, so surely will the old Dutchman pursue ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... version, as a guide and aid to the understanding of the 'conservative' method of writing. It was not necessary for a transliteration to be accurate, whereas, in the case of a translation, the greatest care would naturally be taken to preserve the original sacred text with all nicety and accuracy, since upon accuracy and nicety the whole efficacy of the formulas rested. The redaction of the incantation texts in the double style must not be regarded as a necessary indication of high ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... Fourberies de Scapin, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, betrayed nothing of their author's increasing sadness or suffering. Les Femmes Savantes had at first but little success; the piece was considered heavy; the marvellous nicety of the portraits, the correctness of the judgments, the delicacy and elegance of the dialogue, were not appreciated until later on. Moliere had just composed Le Malade Imaginaire, the last of that succession of blows ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of the wall that was ever rising above them. The measurements, the rulings, the plumbings, the checkings! He was humbled and he was enlightened. He understood that a miracle is only the result of miraculous patience, miraculous nicety, miraculous honesty, miraculous perseverance. He understood that there was no golden and magic secret of building. It was just putting one brick on another and against another—but to a hair's breadth. It was just like anything else. For instance, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... he descended from the coach that his feet were small, and were fitted to a nicety with polished boots of the finest leather. No amount of gaping, gazing and inquisitive side remark embarrassed the newcomer. Perhaps his dark eyes emitted a sparkle of gratified vanity as he glanced about him, distributing a gracious bow among his unknown fellow-citizens. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... tremulously down from above. "Let me do it!" she cried; and while they all looked on in admiration (though with only one eye apiece, since the other was busy aiming at the enemy) she proceeded to load one pair of bellows after another, with the utmost nicety and plenty of poetry-powder. A little was spilled, to be sure, because she trembled so terribly; still, it was an enormous improvement, and they all ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... colourless world. He understood and has explained the secrets of the human heart, the workings of the human passions; but he performs all these moral dissections with the coolness of an anatomist, engaged in a delicate operation. The nicety of his distinctions, and his deep insight into the nature of man, are displayed without passion, while his constant effort after the discovery of new truth, never for one moment betrays him into mysticism, or tempts ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... and rank for walking in with ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, with a cold and careless look in that direction, "Did I?" I reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my meat and drink, and she said, "I don't remember." "Not remember that you ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... Nigel did not think so. He had calculated matters with some nicety. He was not exactly on such terms with Mount Dunstan as would make a casual call seem an entirely natural thing, and he wished to drop in upon him for a casual call and in an unpremeditated manner. He meant to reach the Mount about ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... purposes. So with his conversation—every thought, every fancy, every feeling was expressed with the utmost vivacity and intensity, but a vivacity and intensity compatible with the most singular delicacy and nicety of touch when delicacy and nicety ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... Verocchio, Ghiberti, Pollajuolo, Ghirlandajo, Luca della Robbia, all underwent this training before they applied themselves to architecture, painting, and sculpture. As the goldsmith's craft was understood in Florence, it exacted the most exquisite nicety in performance as well as design. It forced the student to familiarise himself with the materials, instruments, and technical processes of art; so that, later on in life, he was not tempted to leave the execution ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... the wild bees are the cells constructed with more nicety than those of our little Ceratina. She bores out with her jaws a long deep well just the size of her body, and then stretches a thin, delicate cloth of silk drawn tight as a drum-head across each end of her chambers, which she then fills with ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... easy to copy the depth of a rib, and get to what was wanted and avoid it. But I do not like copying where I can help it; besides, what I shall lay before you has the merit of getting at what you want to a nicety, and of finding out what depth of rib will suit the model in hand, and obtaining the mass of air ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... lady doesn't come to," Rawdon said to his little wife as they sat together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a nicety. The new shawl became her wonderfully. The new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... young man he saw that plainly enough, but it was not going to be saved by any young man who could be named in his presence. He had said something like this to Sir John Pynsent, not many days before his marriage, and Sir John, who had taken Sydney's measure to a nicety, had resolved that his promising brother-in-law should be converted at the earliest possible opportunity into a faithful follower and henchman of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. At Education-Farm, the noblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would not rake or pitch ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... conditions of flame, that it requires some cleverness and nicety of discrimination to distinguish the kinds of combustion one from another. For instance, here is a powder which is very combustible, consisting, as you see, of separate little particles. It is called lycopodium[7], and each ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... warn him. "She's most beautiful and charming. And she's Lady Dawn's sister, of course. But——Well, to put it frankly, a woman who's been married three times might just as well never have been married at all. Looks as though she'd only squandered her money in rising to the nicety of a marriage-license. I hope you don't mean to marry her, old chap, because she's ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... had lost some of its shrewdness. It was as if the white frontier had seized and shaken him into a new conception of life. He moved restlessly along the bench, then stepped softly to the side of the bed and straightened the coverlet into greater nicety while ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... recent convention, in which it is needless to say the United had no part. Mr. Macauley's literary attainments are very considerable, but as yet unperfected. Possessed of rare charm in descriptive prose, he needs to exercise a greater nicety of construction in order to develop fully the riches which are his. Gifted with a large, facile, and ingenious vocabulary, he is not sufficiently precise and discriminating in his employment of words according to their finer shades of meaning. This carelessness makes ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... adjustments of the delicate mechanism of the larynx belong to the realm of reflex action—to a spontaneous activity that, left unhindered, does its part in perfect nicety. ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown

... was busy calculating to a scrupulous nicety the very vexed question as to exactly how far four pounds per week might be made to go to the best possible ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... habitualized. Movements such as those made in typewriting and piano-playing, when measured in the psychological laboratory, are found to copy each other with extreme fidelity. The human body is a machine which may be adjusted to a high degree of nicety, and habit is the mechanism by ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... fever runs high and the respiration is much affected, in the first period of measles, and before there is the slightest appearance of eruption, we conceive it often so be our duty to bleed freely, without reference to the subsequent disease of the skin, or any nicety of calculation about this latter going through its regular stages. Indeed, we have usually reason to congratulate ourselves for having, by this means, rendered the subsequent disease milder and more tractable. That affection of the urethra termed ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... situation of the terrestrial paradise, as approved by the Holy Church;[398-2] and I say that the world is not so large as vulgar opinion makes it, and that one degree of the equinoctial line measures fifty-six miles and two-thirds; and this may be proved to a nicety.[398-3] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... were soon fast asleep on the deck, with the exception of the man at the helm, who, instead of thirty-two, could clearly make out sixty-four points in the compass, and of course was able to steer to a much greater nicety. Fortunately, the weather was fine, for when the man at the helm had steered till he could see no more, and requested to be released, he found that his shipmates were so overpowered with fatigue, that it was impossible to wake them. He kicked ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... didn't get reported. Aunt Jane had her quiet moments. Most of them didn't, anyhow. They were properly brought up, and sat still and straight, and took the luck fate brought them as gentlewomen should. And they had an idea of what men were like behind all their nicety. They knew they were all Bogey in disguise. I ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... were roasted alive, while the spectators roared with laughter at the writhings and contortions of the victims in their agony. When their struggles ceased and the bodies were judged to be done to a nicety, they were raked out of the oven, their faces painted black, and so carried to the temple, where they were presented to the gods, only, however, to be afterwards removed, cut up, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... achieve the same happy results in the white loaf. He who plants a strawberry seed will find that the tiny seed will construct a plant, lay in the red tints according to rule and mix the flavor of the berry to a nicety that is the despair of the chef. In the tropic forests there is a flower with a deep cup and the pollen at the bottom. This pollen lies upon a little platter, and underneath the platter is that form of trap known as a figure four, much loved by boys. When the bee, creeping ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... game at romps with these birds, and knew their haunts and habits to a nicety. The covey consisted of thirteen at first, but by repeated blazings into the 'brown of 'em,' he had succeeded in knocking down two. Jog was not one of your conceited shots, who never fired but when he was sure of killing; on the contrary, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... with a clean cloth of the finest of homespun, and everything set out with the same nicety as if the meal had been spread in the dining-room. The old lady, who had sought to please her son by putting on her best cap for the occasion, but who had in truth forgot what day it was until reminded by Grizzie, sat already at the head of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... which nihil dici potest Illustrius. But because this was in the time of the purity of the Latin tongue, when the word Serenus was never used in the Title of any Prince or Person, I shall go on to deale with the utmost candor, forasmuch as in this Nation the nicety of that most eloquent language is not so perfectly understood, which gives occasion to these mistakes. I confess therefore that indeed in the declination of the Latin tongue, and when there scarce could be found out words enough to supply the modern ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... man, Mr. Steele. I commend the nicety of your scruples and am quite ready to trust myself to them. I own to no blot, in my past or present life, calling for public arraignment. If my statement of the fact is not enough, I here swear on the ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... clear as crystal," "where shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy him, or rather alone not give him actual pain. It may give an idea of this exquisite nicety of feeling to mention, that one day he took in his fingers a half-bloomed rose, without blemish, and, smiling with an infinite joy, remarked, "This is perfect. On earth a flower only can ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... depositary. The true Japanese manner of understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and indeed almost excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork; an appearance of extreme simplicity, and an incredible nicety ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... easier task when all was over to set the little Amazons on their horses than to keep them there, for by the time we had perched one on her saddle, or pad rather, and adjusted her with the greatest nicety, another whom we had just left would lose her balance and fall with a scream to the ground. It was almost as difficult as packing mules on the prairie. For my part it must be confessed that I left the completion of the job to others. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... This will bring tears to his eyes, for it seems so strange to him. But if you get tears in your eyes, also, hire him by the day for a while, and look into "the pulse of the machine," you will soon understand the wonderful workings of society, and the nicety of that order of things which separates the wheat from the tare. When the winds of adversity sweep ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... hear no good of her,' returned Gotthold; 'and if you wish your wife to be the pink of nicety, you should ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... document—ay, 'twas a perilous great thing that, no doubt. Likewise in the matter of a new harrow he had once brought up—there were many curiously twisted parts in that to be considered. Not to speak of the great circular saw that had to be set in its course to the nicety of a pencil line, never swaying east nor west, lest it should fly asunder. But this—this mowing-machine of his—'twas a crawling nest of steel springs and hooks and apparatus, and hundreds of screws—Inger's sewing-machine was a bookmarker compared ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... tell you that to a nicety. Penal servitude for life, most likely. They'd call mine a bad ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... Melik's men uprose from the west sides of Surgham, the Khalifa and Yacoub came upon us from the south-west, and a smaller body from the west. In half delirium and full frenzy on rushed the dervishes. Our guns, knowing the range to a nicety—for they were able to see landmarks put down the day before—hurled at them avalanches of shell. The vivid air blazed and shook, and the hail of Lee-Metfords cut, like mighty scythes, lanes in the columns massed ten-deep. Greater resolution and bravery no men ever possessed. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... figure was faultless. From head to heels he was adjusted with mathematical nicety. Every organ in his shapely body did its work silently, easily, accurately. Silver-gray hair covered his head, falling gracefully away from a parting in the middle of it. It never seemed to grow long, and yet it never looked as if it had been cut. Mr. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... full stream was tremendous, enabling me—who say it that should not say it—to lay by a wheen bawbees for a sore head, or the frailties of old age. Somehow or other, the clothes made on my shopboard came into great vogue through all Dalkeith, both for neatness of shape and nicety of workmanship; and the young journeymen of other masters did not think themselves perfected, or worthy a decent wage, till they had crooked their houghs for three months in my service. With regard to myself, some of my acquaintances told me, that if I had gone into Edinburgh to push my fortune, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... the flesh into slices and strips would be easily effected, though it would require more time, and should be done with great nicety. If not sliced very thin, the meat would be liable to ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... of each man with the closest attention, examining the length of the paragraphs, of the sentences, of the words, the variety of the vocabulary, the choice of adjectives and adverbs, the employment of superlatives, the selection of a heading, the nicety of adjustment between the thought to be expressed and the language employed ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... and flowers are watched and inspected with the greatest minuteness. An old invalid soldier commands his 500 or 600 men as gardeners and overseers. Every leaf that falls in pond or canal is carefully fished up. They trim and polish the trees and paths in the gardens to the greatest nicety, and the grass borders are ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood

... since. You smile as if I had been relating a pleasant fable. But tell me, if you can, how it happens that in the forehead of yonder idol there is a small cavity lined with gold into which the Diamond fits with the most exact nicety. That cavity was there when I bought the idol and has in no way been altered since. The shape of the Diamond, as you have seen for yourself, is rather peculiar. Is it therefore possible that mere accident can be at the bottom of such a coincidence? Is not my theory ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... Micky. "I have, crowds of times. I've worked it all out to a nicety. I shall have a house in London and a place in the country as well, so that if my wife doesn't like town we can divide our time and stay six months ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... of the sunlight over the world, I sat at my task. Each instrument, each lens I used, I spent an hour or hours over, giving it the finest polish or nicety of adjustment to which it could be brought. Into that day I had distilled my past; into it I was willing to distil the eternity that was before me. With each now application, the field of the planet shrank a thousand leagues, but each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... The telegraphic request for money, which had been kept a secret from him by his niece, because of his already unfriendly tone towards Somerset, arrived on the morning of the twenty-third—a date which neighboured with painfully suggestive nicety upon that ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... things to all men. Nor was he incapable of passing off, when occasion required, for a Frenchman; but, as he spoke the language with a strong German accent, he called himself an Alsatian. He maintained that character with the utmost nicety; and as there is a strong feeling of friendship, almost equal to that which exists in Scotland, amongst all those who are born in the departments of France bordering on the Rhine, and who maintain their Teutonic originality, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... The nicety of these minute allusions I shall exemplify by another instance, which I take this occasion to mention, because, as I am told, the commentators have omitted it. Tibullus addressed Cynthia ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... undergone extensive glandular and neural operations of great delicacy, many of which had resulted in what could have been agonizing pain without the use of suppressors. As a result, he possessed a biological engine that, for sheer driving power and nicety of control, surpassed any other known to exist or to have ever existed on Earth—with the possible exception of the Nipe. But those five years of rebuilding and retraining had left ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... stepping towards the coat of mail, which hung with the shield and helmet of the chivalrous monarch upon the pillar of the tent, he handled it with such nicety of address as sufficiently to show that he fully understood ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... pleasure after a little time in destroying what he had written and went along with his lips tight and a hard look in his eye, weighing every sentence in the balance and adjusting that balance to such nicety that he found nearly every sentence wanting. Out they came: occasionally a fierce black zig-zag on the page he considered sufficient for future deliberations, but more frequently it needed greater physical activity to relieve his state of mind and he ripped the page fiercely ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... giant.' He is a tremendous fellow in height, and size, and sinew; but such a kind, sweet-tempered chap. He could knock down an ox, yet he wouldn't harm a fly. I am his idol: I sauntered in to his smithy, and forged him one or two knives; and of course he had never seen the hammer used with that nicety; but instead of hating me, as the bad forgers in Hillsborough do, he regularly worships me, and comes blushing up to the farm-house after hours, to ask after me and get a word with me. He is the best ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... rest for an instant upon mine. Had she left it there for two, I should have gone down on my knees before her, or have stood on my head at her feet—have made a fool of myself in some way or another before the whole room full. She timed it to a nicety. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... another plank, which he had secured in an upright position by means of stays on the grating. Had not the sea been still very high, we could have run alongside his raft and picked him off without difficulty; but as it was impossible to steer with the necessary nicety, there was a risk of running him down by so doing. We therefore hove-to to windward of him; and Mr Gale, with the boat's crew who had before volunteered, being lowered, they pulled carefully towards him. The man stood up as he saw them approach; and scarcely ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... varies every minute as the wind and clouds change. I can keep mine constant with mathematical accuracy, or vary the light to a nicety by pressing ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... breath and nodded slowly. The added details were fitting the new theory to a nicety. In conversation with the president he had previously marked the fact that the robber had claimed ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... humanitarianism. It is difficult to analyze a living thing; the analysis is at best imperfect. Many more motives may blend with the three trends; possibly the desire for a new form of social success due to the nicety of imagination, which refuses worldly pleasures unmixed with the joys of self-sacrifice; possibly a love of approbation, so vast that it is not content with the treble clapping of delicate hands, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... Wyley. "The incidents fit to a nicety. Two years afterwards Ensign Knightley comes home. He knows nothing of the duel, or any cause for a duel. Lieutenant Scrope is still 'Harry' to him, and his best of friends. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... and the propagation of their species. A dog, that avoids fire and precipices, that shuns strangers, and caresses his master, affords us an instance of the first kind. A bird, that chooses with such care and nicety the place and materials of her nest, and sits upon her eggs for a due time, and in suitable season, with all the precaution that a chymist is capable of in the most delicate projection, furnishes us with a lively ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... taxi, which, however, deposited them at the Etoile. The driver explained unamiably that he wanted his dinner; and a bribe, unless unthinkable, would have been useless. In these days taxi drivers made fifty francs a day in tips, and, as a Frenchman knows exactly what he wants and calculates to a nicety when he has enough, valuing rest and nutriment above even the delights of gouging foolish Americans, Alexina knew that it would be useless to argue and did not even waste energy in announcing her opinion of him for taking a fare under false pretenses. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... she saw in the same female handwriting—from his old friend Lady Durend, if she had known!—but she dared not, and indeed was not really much disturbed. She had laid her own plans with too great a nicety and felt perfectly sure of the ultimate result of their action. Arabella was each day sent up with the subtlest messages to the poor invalid, which her honor made her unwillingly ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... Deslandes, M. Henrivaux would pass his life in a cocked hat, knee-breeches, peruke, embroidered coat, and sword, for the casting now takes place every day and at a fixed hour. None the less, rather the more, it is a work still of extreme nicety, one to be done by experts, who must be as cool as soldiers under fire. In a certain way and measure it is like ladling out the molten lava of Vesuvius and pressing it into slabs for a lady's toilette-table. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... field of speculation has been opened, the tide of emigration from Europe seems to be setting towards a certain quarter where there are numerous new arrivals who can never compete with old and practised colonists. He who has seen several cities rise can judge to a nicety, from local circumstances, upon what site the capital of the new province must be built; and in the same way he can foresee which must become the business street, and hence knows exactly the relative value of every acre of land in the province. In vain for him are reports ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... a short, thin woman, of dark complexion, small peering black eyes, and slick, shining hair of the same hue, which was arranged with an air of nicety and precision. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk, of the tree which was nearest the peg, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... herself—that Mr. Arabin would be found to be quite safe. But by degrees he began to find that his wife's eyes had been sharper than his own. Other people coupled the signora's name with that of Mr. Arabin. The meagre little prebendary who lived in the close told him to a nicety how often Mr. Arabin had visited at Dr. Stanhope's, and how long he had remained on the occasion of each visit. He had asked after Mr. Arabin at the cathedral library, and an officious little vicar choral ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... indeed anywhere within the range of Greek conceptions?— anything rude, uncomely, or unadorned. No one who reads carefully in this very book of The Republic those pages of criticism which concern art quite as much as poetry, a criticism which drives everywhere at a conscientious nicety of workmanship, will suppose that. If kings and knights never drink from vessels of silver or gold, their earthen cups and platters, we may be sure, would be what we can [254] still see; and the iron ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... sight, moreover, you set him down either for the gentleman by birth fallen a victim to some degrading habit, or for the man of small independent means whose expenses are calculated to such a nicety that the breakage of a windowpane, a rent in a coat, or a visit from the philanthropic pest who asks you for subscriptions to a charity, absorbs the whole of a month's little surplus of pocket-money. If you had seen him that afternoon, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... although convincing, was perhaps ambiguous. It was undoubtedly fortunate that Mother timed her appearance at this point to a nicety, and so prevented ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... exceed Shakspeare in logical correctness and nicety of expression. With a vigour of though and command of language attained by no man besides, it is fair to conclude, that he would not be guilty of faults of construction such as would disgrace ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... are mostly secondary, and, even in steel construction, these are difficult of solution. The stresses in the web of a deep steel girder are not known, and the web is strengthened by a liberal number of stiffening angles, which no expert can figure out to a nicety. The ultimate strength of built-up steel columns is not known, frequently not even within 30%; still less is known of the strength of columns consisting of thin steel casings, or of the types used in the Quebec Bridge. It seems to be impossible to solve ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... eye!" said Otto; and stepping forward in the English manner (which his godfather having learnt in Palestine, had taught him), he brought his bowstring to his ear, took a good aim, allowing for the wind and calculating the parabola to a nicety. Whiz! his arrow ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... has merely substituted his "wormwood wine" for Malone's vinegar; and before he can make it as palatable to common sense, and Shakspeare's "logical correctness and nicety of expression," as it was to Creed and Shepley, he must get over the "stalking-horse," the drink UP, which stands in his way precisely as it did in that of Malone's more legitimate proposition. MR. SINGER overleaps the difficulty by a bare assertion that "to drink UP was commonly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... at worst occasional; the embarrassment of the man's talk incessant. He was plainly a practised conversationalist; the nicety of his inflections, the elegance of his gestures, and the fine play of his expression, told us that. We, meanwhile, sat like aliens in a playhouse; we could see the actors were upon some material business and performing well, but the plot ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of Jerusalem is described with equal nicety. We may notice viii. 20; ix. 7; x. 23; xviii. 1, 15; xix. 17, 41; and particularly the pool near the sheep-gate, having five porches (v. 2), and the place which is called the Pavement, "but in the Hebrew Gabbatha" (xix. 13). Even a person who had heard of Solomon's porch ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... Taste. — N. taste; good taste, refined taste, cultivated taste; delicacy, refinement, fine feeling, gust, gusto, tact, finesse; nicety &c. (discrimination) 465; [Grk]; polish, elegance, grace. judgment, discernment &c. 465. dilettantism, dilettanteism; virtu; fine art; culture, cultivation. [Science of taste] aesthetics. man of taste &c.; connoisseur, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... surrounded them; they did but do in manhood what they had been unconsciously molded to do in boyhood, when they were set to Eton at ten with gold dressing-boxes to grace their Dame's tables, embryo Dukes for their cofags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth of the champagnes at the Christopher. The old, old story—how it repeats itself! Boys grow up amid profuse prodigality, and are launched into a world where they can no more arrest themselves than the feather-weight can pull in the lightning stride of the two-year-old, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... not term her new friend "nice," as she certainly would have done in the present day. To her ear that word had no meaning except that of particular and precise—the meaning which we still attach to its relative "nicety." ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... With all his nicety of contrivance, the Greek had at the last moment forgotten to extinguish the lamp or take it into the house with him. The King recognized it and the boat, yet circumspectly drew his humble craft up out of the water. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... qualities. There should be considerable, though not necessarily systematic, culture. There should be delicate instincts of taste cultivated, consciously, or unconsciously, to a degree of extreme and subtle nicety. There should be a power, at once refined and strong, of both perceiving and expressing to others the significance of language, so that neither shades nor masses of meaning, so to speak, may be either lost or exaggerated. Above all, there should ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... does not even know of the existence of the organs and secretions involved, but something sends the messages and it is something that has a remarkable likeness to mind as we usually think of mind,—something which takes advantage of the past and gages means to an end with a nicety that excites ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... friendship to all human possessions; for there is nothing so suited to our nature, so well adapted to prosperity or adversity. But first of all, I am of opinion that except among the virtuous friendship can not exist; I do not analyze this principle too closely, as they do who inquire with too great nicety into those things, perhaps with truth on their side, but with little general advantage; for they maintain that there is no good man but the wise man. Be it so, yet they define wisdom to be such as no mortal has ever attained to; whereas we ought to contemplate those ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... sure, the bit of doggerel had been inscribed on a card sent him by Harriette in the third-grade valentine box, but Louise need never know the secret of its authorship. And it expressed his feelings with such a degree of nicety! ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... hard at the ruddy, impudent face, which instantly assumed an appearance of the most defiant unconcern, while its owner began to devote his energies to shying stones at an invisible rook upon the old church tower with great nicety of aim. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... under the banners of the various leaders. The regulation of the symbols whereby the Sovereigns and Lords of Europe should be distinguished, all of whom were ardent in maintaining the honour of the several nations to which they belonged, was a matter of great nicety, and it was properly entrusted to the Heralds who invented signs of honour which could not be construed into offence, and made general regulations for their display on the banners and shields of the chiefs of the different nations. The ornaments and regulations were sanctioned ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... the last in the house, being persuaded that she was so before God. She feared nothing more than what ever could bring to her mind the remembrance of her former dignity. She prayed and read much, worked with her hands, abhorred the least appearance of worldly nicety, and took a singular pleasure in visiting and comforting the sick. Thus she passed the fifteen last years of her life, never suffering the least preference to be given her above anyone in the community. Her mortifications at length ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... asked me to come and bring you." I throw the bait with studied nicety. "He's getting up a party to go out to Johnson's, and wants to talk things over a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... him to a nicety; it had, in fact, no chance to do otherwise, for his great back and shoulders stretched it tight, and would have done so had it been made like a sack. Of all the big men who had gone by that day Jack Duck was the biggest; ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... her fear me: that will enhance in her mind every favour I shall afterwards vouchsafe to shew her: and never question old humdrum Virtue,' thought I, 'but the tempter without, and the tempter within, will be too many for the perversest nicety ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... of an entirely new police force, composed exclusively of automaton figures, which, with the assistance of the ingenious Signor Gagliardi, of Windmill-street, in the Haymarket, he had succeeded in making with such nicety, that a policeman, cab-driver, or old woman, made upon the principle of the models exhibited, would walk about until knocked down like any real man; nay, more, if set upon and beaten by six or eight noblemen or gentlemen, after it was down, the figure would utter ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... exquisite tools, more powerful than any elephant, more delicately-fitted than any watch for executing the metalwork of steam-engines, of philosophical instruments, and everything requiring either great power or mathematical nicety. Some of these tools for planing, boring, rivetting, welding, cutting iron and other metals, are to be found in great iron manufactories. Indeed, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Whitworth are of a class of men who have proved that the execution ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... position, we may read our own near destiny. Grasping, ambitious and powerful the British race certainly is; illiberal, cowardly or mean it certainly is not. Highly refined it never was, possibly never will be. Neither the ocean nor the mountain produces the highest refinement of manners or nicety of scientific investigation; but the shores of the ocean and the mountain valleys are the birthplaces of ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... street, messieurs." And he saluted their uniform, the same being constructed of cotton khaki, with a horseshoe on the arm and an oxidized metal mule on the collar. The brigadier wondered at and admired the minute nicety of administrative detail characterizing a government which clothed even its muleteers so becomingly, yet with ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... observe in passing that no gingerly nicety of regard in calling those who served by any other name than servant, was shown or heeded in olden times. They believed with St. Paul, "Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it." All hired workers in the house, hired laborers in the field, those contracting ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... note it as a nicety, that the membrane must be moist through which this transudation is to take place; and I admit that there are men whose enveloping sheath of individualism and egotism is so hard and dry, so little interpenetrated by candor and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... them. But there was some sparkling, bubbling quality about her that was all her own. She read, and assimilated rather than remembered what she read, adopted this little affectation in speech, this little nicety of manner. She glowed with varied and absurd ambitions, and took the office into her confidence about them. Wavering and incomplete as her aunt's influence had been, one fact had early been impressed upon her; she was primarily and absolutely a "lady." Susan's forebears had really been ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... sing'lar man!" Direxia went on, investigating with exquisite nicety the corner of a pane. "He gave me a turn just now, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... the thing done; and have a beauty of their own. It is so with that old euphuism of the Elizabethan age—that pride of dainty language and curious expression, which it is very easy to ridicule, which often made itself ridiculous, but which had below it a real sense of fitness and nicety; and which, as we see in this very play, and still more clearly in the Sonnets, had some fascination for the young Shakespeare himself. It is this foppery of delicate language, this fashionable plaything of his time, with which Shakespeare is occupied in Love's Labours Lost. He shows us the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... in trudging up a hill, or because his mud-guard was broken off, or his tire wounded in the great cause, or his polished headlight knocked into a tin can. You will not ridicule the old splint of a shingle which was bound with such surgical nicety among his rusting spokes. If you do, then you are the kind of a boy who would laugh at a wounded soldier and you had better ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... with its long tail laid right over its back, and its beak thrust underneath its wing. It ate of everything—beef, turtle, fish, farina, fruit—and was a constant attendant at meals. It learned the hour to a nicety, and he found it difficult to keep the bird away from the dining-room at these hours. When it had become somewhat impudent and troublesome, he tried to shut it out in the back-yard; but Tocano used to climb the fence, and ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... never in a hurry, and would remain in one spot until they had exhausted all the resources of the country, while they knew to a nicety how to display their goods attractively before the expected customer. Their wares comprised weapons and ornaments for men, axes, swords, incised or damascened daggers with hilts of gold or ivory, bracelets, necklaces, amulets ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero



Words linked to "Nicety" :   justness, rightness, import, shade, conformance, refinement, significance, signification



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