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ity or state of being nice (in any of the senses of that word.). The miller smiled of her nicety. Chaucer.

from carefulness; exact conformity to truth, or to a rule or model; precision; exactness; nicety; correctness; as, the value of testimony depends on its accuracy. The professed end [of logic] is to teach men to think, to judge, and to reason, with precision and accuracy. Reid. The accuracy with which the piston fits th…

The state or quality of being accurate; accuracy; exactness; nicety; precision.

The state or quality or being curious; nicety; accuracy; exactness; elaboration. [Obs.] Bacon. When thou wast in thy gilt and thy perfume, they mocked thee for too much curiosity. Shak. A screen accurately cut in tapiary work . . . with great curiosity. Evelin.

Exhibiting care or nicety; artfully constructed; elaborate; wrought with elegance or skill. To devise curious works. Ex. xxxv. 32 His body couched in a curious bed. Shak.

The quality of being dainty; nicety; niceness; elegance; delicacy; deliciousness; fastidiousness; squeamishness. The daintiness and niceness of our captains Hakluyt. More notorious for the daintiness of the provision . . . than for the massiveness of the dish. Hakewill. The duke exeeded in the daintiness of his leg and…

Nicety or fineness of form, texture, or constitution; softness; elegance; smoothness; tenderness; and hence, frailty or weakness; as, the delicacy of a fiber or a thread; delicacy of a hand or of the human form; delicacy of the skin; delicacy of frame.

The condition of being exact; accuracy; nicety; precision; regularity; as, exactness of jurgement or deportment.

To act or talk with affected nicety; to affect delicacy in manner.

That minces; characterized by primness or affected nicety.

In a mincing manner; not fully; with affected nicety.

Nicety. [Colloq.] Chapman.

To deck with great nicety; to arrange with affected preciseness; to prink.

Dilatory; tedious; superfluous. [Obs.] "Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blushes." Shak.

One who aims at excessive purity or nicety, esp. in the choice of language. He [Fox] . . . purified vocabulary with a scrupulosity unknown to any purist. Macaulay.

A trifling nicety; a cavil; a quibble. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers now. Coleridge.

Subtilty; nicety; quibble. "Nice, sharp quillets of the law." Shak.

To affect nicety or subtilty in thought or language. "He makes another paragraph about our refining in controversy." Atterbury.

To sew together so that the seam is scarcely visible; to sew up with skill and nicety; to finedraw.

To mold without nicety or elegance; to form with asperities and inequalities.