subtile
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of subtile
1325–75; Middle English < Latin subtīlis fine (originally of fabric), equivalent to sub- sub- + -tīlis, akin to tēla cloth on a loom, loom (< *tekslā, derivative of texere to weave; see text)
Example Sentences
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See Examples For:
Recent scientific discoveries have conferred upon man new powers of investigation, whereby nature has been made to reveal secrets so subtile that they never had been dreamt of before in philosophy.
From Scientific American ● Jan. 13, 2013
At Paris the Universe is seen, compos’d of Vortices of subtile Matter; but nothing like it is seen in London.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Very beautiful, too, was their copy of Guido's Aurora, and yet less difficult than the other, the coloring being at once less subtile and more brilliant.
From From the Oak to the Olive A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey by Julia Ward Howe
She was by no means sure if it were her own youth that had called her, conspiring in some subtile way with the push of leaves and grasses out toward the strengthened sunshine.
From An Ambitious Woman A Novel by Edgar Fawcett
The subtile philosophy of the Greeks was now brought into contact with the sublime but corrupted theology of the Persians, and the mysticism of India secretly mingled itself with the mass of knowledge.
From Secret Societies of the Middle Ages by Thomas Keightley
That cause of motion he makes the Materia Subtilis; and the finer or subtiler that is, the better and fitter he conceives it to be to preserve Motion.
From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 Giving some Accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World by Henry Oldenburg
The Reflexion must have rather been caused by a subtiler Medium, which could recede through the Glasses at the creeping in of the Water.
From Opticks or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Sir Isaac Newton
Gradually he wove a drama round it; line by line it took shape for a book that was to be subtiler, finer and more sincere than anything that he had ever written.
From The Education of Eric Lane by Stephen McKenna
We rather think that far subtiler things than the doctrine of association had from of old been familiar to him.
From Life of Robert Burns by Thomas Carlyle
Bread is a binder, and for that abolisht even in their Ale, whose lost room fills an apple, which is more airy and of subtiler nature.
From The Scornful Lady by John Fletcher
It was this mastery of the interior life, this impassioned voicing of its subtilest secrets, that made Rousseau so irresistibly attractive to women.
From The Friendships of Women by William Rounseville Alger
Truth is a point; the subtilest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn away, or blunted.
From Imaginary Conversations and Poems A Selection by Walter Savage Landor
He saw it was lovable, and he made it the theme of his noblest poems, his subtilest philosophies, and his highest Art.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 44, June, 1861 Creator by Various
At some far-away period in childhood it got imbedded in my fancy, and in process of time had acquired that subtilest, indefinable fascination which belongs only to imaginative reminiscence.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 by Various
I can say, from an experience of over a dozen years, that pupils between twelve and fifteen years of age are immensely interested in such discussions, and are capable of making the subtilest distinctions.
From The Moral Instruction of Children by Felix Adler
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
