elegant
Americanadjective
-
tastefully fine or luxurious in dress, style, design, etc..
elegant furnishings.
-
gracefully refined and dignified, as in tastes, habits, or literary style.
an elegant young gentleman; an elegant prosodist.
-
graceful in form or movement.
an elegant wave of the hand.
-
appropriate to refined taste.
a man devoted to elegant pursuits.
-
excellent; fine; superior.
an absolutely elegant wine.
-
(of scientific, technical, or mathematical theories, solutions, etc.) gracefully concise and simple; admirably succinct.
adjective
-
tasteful in dress, style, or design
-
dignified and graceful in appearance, behaviour, etc
-
cleverly simple; ingenious
an elegant solution to a problem
Related Words
See fine 1.
Other Word Forms
- elegantly adverb
- hyperelegant adjective
- hyperelegantly adverb
- overelegant adjective
- overelegantly adverb
- superelegant adjective
- superelegantly adverb
- unelegant adjective
- unelegantly adverb
Etymology
Origin of elegant
First recorded in 1400–50; Late Middle English (from Middle French ), from Latin ēlegant- (stem of ēlegāns ) “tasteful, choice,” equivalent to ēleg- (akin to ēlig- “select”) + -ant- a suffix forming adjectives from verbs; originally the present participle of ēlegāre (unattested); elect, -ant
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And it comes from an elegant left-hander with a flash of peroxide.
From BBC
Listing images revealed a tasteful interior, with a neutral, elegant palette used throughout the home, which is filled with natural light.
From MarketWatch
Melamine may not be the most elegant material, but I was grateful for the fact that, no matter how violently a 1-year-old dropped that plate, it would bounce and not shatter.
The spacious dining area is surrounded by all-white walls and topped by an elegant chandelier.
From MarketWatch
Man Ray also built ingenious collages, bas-relief constructions and elegant chess sets.
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.
