14 August 2015

finesse

[fi-ness]

noun

1. extreme delicacy or subtlety in action, performance, skill, discrimination, taste, etc.
2. skill in handling a difficult or highly sensitive situation; adroit and artful management:
exceptional diplomatic finesse.
3. a trick, artifice, or stratagem.
4. Bridge, Whist. an attempt to win a trick with a card while holding a higher card not in sequence with it, in the hope that the card or cards between will not be played.
verb (used without object), finessed, finessing.
5. to use finesse or artifice.
6. to make a finesse at cards.
verb (used with object), finessed, finessing.
7. to bring about by finesse or artifice.
8. to avoid; circumvent.
9. to make a finesse with (a card).
10. to force the playing of (a card) by a finesse.

Origin of finesse
Middle French
1400-1450; late Middle English: degree of excellence or purity < Middle French < Vulgar Latin *fīnitia. See fine1, -ice

Synonyms
1, 2. tact, diplomacy, savoir faire, circumspection, sensitivity, sensibility.

Dictionary.com

Examples from the Web for finesse

Contemporary Examples

He was a good wrestler, and, as a soccer player, his lack of finesse got him the position of “enforcer.”
Al Franken’s Reverend Wright
Tom Davis
January 7, 2009

Anagram

sins fee
sense if

Today’s quote

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

– Bertolt Brecht

On this day

14 August 1248 – construction begins on the Cologne Cathedral in Germany.

14 August 1880 – construction of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany is finally completed … 632 years after commencement.

14 August 1947 – Pakistan Independence Day. At the stroke of midnight (14/15 August), India was partitioned and the nation of Pakistan created, independent of British and Indian rule.

14 August 1956 – death of Bertolt Brecht, German playwright, writer and theatre practitioner. Born 10 February 1898.

14 August 1963 – Considered to be the founding documents of Australia’s indigenous land rights (native title) movement, the first Bark Petition was presented to the Australian Government’s House of Representatives by Jock Nelson, Member for the Northern Territory on behalf of the Yolngu people of Yirrkala. The second Bark Petition was presented to the House of Representatives by then Opposition Leader, Arthur Calwell. The petitions were ochre paintings on bark and signed by 13 clan leaders of the Yolngu region (Gove peninsula), protesting the Commonwealth Government granting mining rights to Nabalco on Yolngu land . The petitions resulted in a parliamentary inquiry that recommended compensation be paid to the Yolngu people. It was the first recognition of native title in Australia.