Crossword clues for dainty
dainty
- Daughter is not unknown to be genteel
- Daughter is not, in conclusion, very elegant
- Gracefully delicate
- Like Fabergé eggs
- Like a tiny flower
- Refined and delicate
- Small & delicate
- Pretty and delicate
- Precious and delicate
- Overly particular
- Like sylphs
- Like porcelain teacups
- Like petits fours
- Like a little flower
- Like a lace handkerchief
- Fine pastry, e.g
- Delicately pretty
- Delicate, like a teacup
- Delicate, like a doily
- Delicate, as a doily
- Temptingly tasty
- Delicately small and pretty
- Like lacework
- Small and delicate
- Like FabergГ© eggs
- Something considered choice to eat
- Petite
- Fine; tender
- Pleasing to the taste
- Fine pastry, e.g.
- Exquisite
- Overnice
- Delicious and choice
- Choice
- Sweet daughter is not with Yankee
- Small and pretty
- Small and beautiful
- Pretty daughter is not back in play
- Particular Democrat isn't first to yield
- It’s pretty, and it changed by the end of July
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dainty \Dain"ty\, a. [Compar. Daintier; superl. Daintiest.]
-
Rare; valuable; costly. [Obs.]
Full many a deynt['e] horse had he in stable.
--Chaucer.Note: Hence the proverb ``dainty maketh dearth,'' i. e., rarity makes a thing dear or precious.
-
Delicious to the palate; toothsome.
Dainty bits Make rich the ribs.
--Shak. -
Nice; delicate; elegant, in form, manner, or breeding; well-formed; neat; tender.
Those dainty limbs which nature lent For gentle usage and soft delicacy.
--Milton.I would be the girdle. About her dainty, dainty waist.
--Tennyson. -
Requiring dainties. Hence: Overnice; hard to please; fastidious; squeamish; scrupulous; ceremonious.
Thew were a fine and dainty people.
--Bacon.And let us not be dainty of leave-taking, But shift away.
--Shak.To make dainty, to assume or affect delicacy or fastidiousness. [Obs.]
Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, She, I'll swear, hath corns.
--Shak.
Dainty \Dain"ty\, n.; pl. Dainties. [OE. deinie, dainte, deintie, deyntee, OF. deinti['e] delicacy, orig., dignity, honor, fr. L. dignitas, fr. dignus worthy. See Deign, and cf. Dignity.]
-
Value; estimation; the gratification or pleasure taken in anything. [Obs.]
I ne told no deyntee of her love.
--Chaucer. -
That which is delicious or delicate; a delicacy.
That precious nectar may the taste renew Of Eden's dainties, by our parents lost.
--Beau. & Fl. -
A term of fondness. [Poetic]
--B. Jonson.Syn: Dainty, Delicacy.
Usage: These words are here compared as denoting articles of food. The term delicacy as applied to a nice article of any kind, and hence to articles of food which are particularly attractive. Dainty is stronger, and denotes some exquisite article of cookery. A hotel may be provided with all the delicacies of the season, and its table richly covered with dainties.
These delicacies I mean of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits, and flowers, Walks and the melody of birds.
--Milton.[A table] furnished plenteously with bread, And dainties, remnants of the last regale.
--Cowper.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, "excellence, elegance; a luxury," from Old French deintie (12c.) "price, value," also "delicacy, pleasure," from Latin dignitatem (nominative dignitas) "greatness, rank, worthiness, worth, beauty," from dignus "worthy" (see dignity).
c.1300, deinte, "delightful, pleasing," from dainty (n.). Meaning evolved in Middle English to "choice, excellent" (late 14c.) to "delicately pretty." Related: Daintiness.
Wiktionary
a. 1 (context obsolete English) excellent; valuable, fine. 2 elegant; delicately small and pretty. n. 1 (context obsolete English) esteem, honour. 2 A delicacy. 3 (context Canada Prairies and northwestern Ontario English) A fancy cookie, pastry, or square served at a social event (usually plural). 4 (context obsolete English) (non-gloss definition: An affectionate term of address.)
WordNet
adj. affectedly dainty or refined [syn: mincing, niminy-piminy, prim, twee]
of delicate composition and artistry; "a dainty teacup"; "an exquisite cameo" [syn: exquisite]
especially pleasing to the taste; "a dainty dish to set before a kind"; "a tasty morsel" [syn: tasty]
excessively fastidious and easily disgusted; "too nice about his food to take to camp cooking"; "so squeamish he would only touch the toilet handle with his elbow" [syn: nice, overnice, prissy, squeamish]
n. something considered choice to eat [syn: delicacy, goody, kickshaw, treat]
Wikipedia
Dainty may refer to:
- 9758 Dainty, asteroid
- HMS Dainty, four ships of the Royal Navy
- Dainty, a street ball game played in Schnitzelburg, Louisville
Usage examples of "dainty".
Thereafter as the night aged, they were shown to a sleeping chamber, which albeit not richly decked, or plenished with precious things, was most dainty clean, and sweet smelling, and strewn with flowers, so that the night was sweet to them in a chamber of love.
Lady Dulce was small, dainty, diminutive, tiny, miniature, animalcular, microscopic, sub-molecular .
They had small areolae, of a bewitching dark coral which seemed most intense, and set in the centers of those sweetly angelic haloes appeared two dainty little pink buds, crinkly and twitching with every breath, sweet tidbits, morsels of delight for the lips and the tongue of an appreciative connoisseur such as I prided myself on being.
There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears.
Dew lay heavy on the grass, as the dainty heels of my captresses testified, yet they trod lightly upon daisies wide-open to the blue sky, while daffadowndillies stooped in a silence broken only by their laughter.
And when she came I looked on her, and deemed that I had seen her aforetime: she was not old, but of middle age, of dark red hair, and brown eyes somewhat small: not a big woman, but well fashioned of body, and looking as if she had once been exceeding dainty and trim.
I took a suite of three rooms and ordered supper for two, warning the man that I was dainty, liked good things, and did not care for the cost.
A couple of dainty muslin dresses were draped over chairs, for Dyce was the finest clear starcher in Marlborough, and her kitchen was all too small to hold the products of her skill.
Sunflower, ere it comes to expand and show its golden face, being dressed as an artichoke, and eaten as a dainty.
As for me, I ate of fishes that never swam in earthly seas, and of strange fowl that never flapped a way through thick terrestrial air, ate and drank as happy as a king, and falling each moment more and more in love with the wonderfully beautiful girl at my side who was a real woman of flesh and blood I knew, yet somehow so dainty, so pink and white, so unlike other girls in the smoothness of her outlines, in the subtle grace of each unthinking attitude, that again and again I looked at her over the rim of my tankard half fearing she might dissolve into nothing, being the half-fairy which she was.
They cut them in half while still green, scraped out the light remaining pulp when dry, and dragged them down with the minimum of trouble, light as feathers, tenacious as steel plate, and already in the form and fashion of dainty craft from five to twenty feet in length, when the process was completed.
Taking the dainty white fichu from the bedf he arranged it in the neck of the gown, covering her semi-exposed bosom.
Or, the travelled American, the petitmaitre of the colonies,--the ape of London foppery, as the newspaper was the semblance of the London journals,--he, with his gray powdered periwig, his embroidered coat, lace ruffles, and glossy silk stockings, golden-clocked,--his buckles of glittering paste, at knee-band and shoestrap,--his scented handkerchief, and chapeau beneath his arm, even such a dainty figure need not have disdained to glance at these old yellow pages, while they were the mirror of passing times.
Taking off the top, Alice lifted out a huge bunch of beautiful galax leaves and another of the daintiest sprays of evergreen.
Lake Pointe, the handsome house, snap and hiss of logs aflame, chunky glass in my hand, Glory Doyle Geis in wine slacks and white sweater sitting on a cushion on the raised hearth, dainty, bitter-sweet, semi-sad in the firelight.