subtle

«subtle» in Mova's early modern english dictionary: crafty — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

kind

archaic sense

modern equivalent

crafty

part of speech

adjective

meaning for a pupil

Clever in a sly, tricky way, able to fool others without them noticing. tree →

how it differs from today

Today "subtle" means small, delicate or hard to notice. The first sentence uses the old sense of sly cleverness; the second and third use today's sense.

examples

• Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. (Torah GEN.3.1, JPS 1917) tree →
• The subtle characterisation of the various occupations reaches a high level of artistic merit. (More English Fairy Tales) tree →
• Was it not rather that he should not henceforth see Burd Janet?--a subtle touch of jealousy. (More English Fairy Tales) tree →

primary record

subtle

tests

manual 10.3; corpora 8 (Torah 1, tales 7, Sefer Yetzirah 0); EWT 3; ratio 0.1 (Torah alone 0.3); Wiktionary no archaic label

In the corpora

• Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.
• With the pure Thou dost show myself pure; and with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself subtle.
• With the pure Thou dost show Thyself pure; and with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself subtle.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «subtle» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.