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GRACEFUL
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Characterized by beauty of movement, style, form, or execution
Classified under:
Similar:
elegant (displaying effortless beauty and simplicity in movement or execution)
fluent; fluid; liquid; smooth (smooth and unconstrained in movement)
gainly (graceful and pleasing)
gracile; willowy (slender and graceful)
lissom; lissome; lithe; lithesome; sinuous; supple (gracefully thin and bending and moving with ease)
Also:
beautiful (delighting the senses or exciting intellectual or emotional admiration)
elegant (refined and tasteful in appearance or behavior or style)
Antonym:
awkward (lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance)
Derivation:
gracefulness (beautiful carriage)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Suggesting taste, ease, and wealth
Synonyms:
elegant; graceful; refined
Classified under:
Similar:
gracious (characterized by charm, good taste, and generosity of spirit)
Context examples:
What a form she had, what a face she had, what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
For colorful, graceful sea fans swaying on coral reefs in the waters around Puerto Rico, copper is an emerging threat in an era of warming oceans.
(Sea fan corals face new threat in warming ocean: copper, National Science Foundation)
In speaking, they pronounced through the nose and throat, and their language approaches nearest to the High-Dutch, or German, of any I know in Europe; but is much more graceful and significant.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
She was a delicate, ethereal creature, swaying and willowy, light and graceful of movement.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
This new moon in graceful Pisces will invite enchanting social activity into your life.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
In the damper hollows the Mauritia palms threw out their graceful drooping fronds.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Catherine then ran directly upstairs, and watched Miss Thorpe's progress down the street from the drawing-room window; admired the graceful spirit of her walk, the fashionable air of her figure and dress; and felt grateful, as well she might, for the chance which had procured her such a friend.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
He, complete in his lieutenant's uniform, looking and moving all the taller, firmer, and more graceful for it, and with the happiest smile over his face, walked up directly to Fanny, who, rising from her seat, looked at him for a moment in speechless admiration, and then threw her arms round his neck to sob out her various emotions of pain and pleasure.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
One was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence and love; the younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his features were moulded with the finest symmetry, yet his eyes and attitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
