The Collaborative International Dictionary
Subtilty \Sub"til*ty\, n. [Contr. fr. subtility.]
The quality or state of being subtile; thinness; fineness; as, the subtility of air or light.
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Refinement; extreme acuteness; subtlety.
Intelligible discourses are spoiled by too much subtility in nice divisions.
--Locke. -
Cunning; skill; craft. [Obs.]
To learn a lewd man this subtility.
--Chaucer. -
Slyness in design; artifice; guile; a cunning design or artifice; a trick; subtlety.
O full of all subtility and all mischief.
--Acts xiii. 10.Note: In senses 2, 3, and 4 the word is more commonly written subtlety.
Wiktionary
n. (context archaic English) subtlety
Usage examples of "subtilty".
The changes and interpolations of Tribonian and his colleagues are excused by the pretence of uniformity: but their cares have been insufficient, and the antinomies, or contradictions of the Code and Pandects, still exercise the patience and subtilty of modern civilians.
The changes and interpolations of Tribonian and his colleagues are excused by the pretence of uniformity: but their cares have been insufficient, and the antinomies, or contradictions of the Code and Pandects, still exercise the patience and subtilty of modern civilians.
And in sedition, men being always in the procincts of battell, to hold together, and use all advantages of force, is a better stratagem, than any that can proceed from any subtilty of Wit.
Also Merlin let make by his subtilty that Balin's sword was put in a marble stone standing upright as great as a mill stone, and the stone hoved always above the water and did many years, and so by adventure it swam down the stream to the City of Camelot, that is in English Winchester.