nuance

American  

[noo-ahns, nyoo-, noo-ahns, nyoo-, ny-ahns] / ˈnu ɑns, ˈnju-, nuˈɑns, nju-, nüˈɑ̃s /

noun

• nuances
  plural

1. 

   a subtle difference or distinction in expression, meaning, response, etc.

   Synonyms:

   refinement, nicety, subtlety, shading, shade

2. a very slight difference or variation in color or tone.

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verb (used with object)

nuanced, nuancing

1. to give nuance to; to color.

   She carefully nuanced her words, to put a positive spin on the situation.

nuance British  

/ njuːˈɑːns, ˈnjuːɑːns /

noun

1. a subtle difference in colour, meaning, tone, etc; a shade or graduation

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verb

1. to give subtle differences to

   carefully nuanced words

nuance Cultural  

1. A fine shade of meaning: “I liked the film, but I know I missed some of its nuances.”

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nuanced
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• nuances
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of nuance

First recorded in 1775–85; from French: “shade, hue,” equivalent to nu(er) “to shade” (literally, “to cloud”), from unattested Vulgar Latin nūbāre, derivative of unattested nūba, for Latin nūbēs “cloud”) + -ance noun suffix; see -ance

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Explanation

Use nuance to refer to a very small difference in color, meaning, or feeling. What makes singers brilliant is not how loud they can sing a note, but how many nuances they can evoke through their approach. Pronounced "NOO-ahns," this noun was borrowed from French in the 18th century and derives ultimately from Latin nūbēs "a cloud." Think of clouds––subtle gradations in color to understand this word. When you say a work of art was nuanced, it means there was a lot to it, but incorporated subtly.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

nuance nuances nuanced nuancing

“People reveal who they are over the five episodes. There’s an extraordinary amount of nuance, but if somebody’s saying something stupid, we have that too.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026

The other nuance is, that success cannot have come too recently.

From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026

The word everyone here uses for this phenomenon is tkuma: Hebrew for rebirth or renaissance, with an added nuance, we’re told, of national revival, of a people rising again after having plummeted.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026

My English teachers and literature professors were probably too tired to parse such nuance, and I don’t blame them.

From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026

I looked out at the world around me and no longer saw nuance.

From "A Very Large Expanse of Sea" by Tahereh Mafi

These critical nuances haven’t reached the protesting masses yet.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026

This, of course, has its own nuances, but being a functional adult means learning to measure your own integrity.

From Salon ● Sep. 5, 2026

"So, how does a self-driving vehicle respond to emergency services? And what are the nuances of doing that in a crowded place like London?"

From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026

It’s going to take me years to become fluent in all the nuances of the sport.

From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2026

Then he'd clear his throat and give a deeply intoned order, as though each syllable were pregnant with nuances of profoundly important meaning.

From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison

"Understanding those connections gives us a more nuanced perspective on our own planet's future and what we might look for on other planets."

From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2026

After that conversation, I was like, this sounds really fresh and nuanced and organic.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026

The company believes some AI can’t make the nuanced evaluations necessary for shopping handmade and preowned goods, according to a person familiar with the matter.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026

His takeaway is nuanced, and he cautioned that investors shouldn’t use conference-call mentions “ as a proxy for either the technology’s adoption or near-term utility.”

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026

There are more nuanced ways to inflate students’ scores.

From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt

Instead, “Concentrate” shines when Taylor focuses on her archive and relates it to her own embodied experiences, nuancing the participants’ identities and humanities.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 20, 2022

If you want to stay with this guy, you’re probably going to need to work on broadening and nuancing your framing.

From Slate ● Dec. 4, 2019

He conceded that he had done “a poor job of nuancing what I was trying to get at.”

From New York Times ● Apr. 16, 2017

There will remain debates about the details of implementation and the nuancing and emphasis and the language and so on.

From Forbes ● Aug. 20, 2014

As soon as the derivation runs danger of being felt as a mere nuancing of, a finicky play on, the primary concept, it tends to be absorbed by the radical word, to disappear as such.

From Language An Introduction to the Study of Speech by Edward Sapir

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Related Words

• distinction
• gradation
• hint
• implication
• nicety
• refinement
• subtlety

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