Search the Dictionary

Lacking substance, as a tenuous argument.

Consisting of ether; hence, exceedingly light or airy; tenuous; spiritlike; characterized by extreme delicacy, as form, manner, thought, etc. Vast chain of being, which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man. Pope.

Lacking substance or solidity; tenuous. "Unconnected, gaseous information." Sir J. Stephen.

Tenuous, volatile, airy, or vapory substance, possessed of active qualities. All bodies have spirits . . . within them. Bacon.

Having the quality of spirit; tenuous in substance, and having active powers or properties; ethereal; immaterial; spiritual; pure.

Delicately constituted or constructed; nice; fine; delicate; tenuous; finely woven. "A sotil [subtile] twine's thread." Chaucer. More subtile web Arachne can not spin. Spenser. I do distinguish plain Each subtile line of her immortal face. Sir J. Davies.

distinctions; nicely discriminating; -- said of persons; as, a subtle logician; refined; tenuous; sinuous; insinuating; hence, penetrative or pervasive; -- said of the mind; its faculties, or its operations; as, a subtle intellect; a subtle imagination; a subtle process of thought; also, difficult of apprehension; elu…

Rare or subtile; tenuous; -- opposed to dense. [Obs.] Glanvill.

The quality or state of being tenuous; thinness, applied to a broad substance; slenderness, applied to anything that is long; as, the tenuity of a leaf; the tenuity of a hair.

To pass like a wire; to flow in a wirelike form, or in a tenuous stream. [R.] P. Fletcher.