Word.ws English Dictionary

nuance

UK/ˈnjuː.ɑːns//ˈnju.ɑns/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

nuance noun: a minor distinction.

Noun

nuance (countable and uncountable, plural nuances)

  1. (countable) A minor distinction.
    • hidden nuances
  2. Subtlety or fine detail.
    • Understanding the basics is easy, but appreciating the nuances takes years.
    • […] the richer our collections become, the more numerous are the proofs that all is more or less shaded (nuance), that the remarkable differences become obliterated […]1901, Alpheus Spring Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution

Verb

nuance (third-person singular simple present nuances, present participle nuancing, simple past and past participle nuanced)

  1. (transitive) To apply a nuance to; to change or redefine in a subtle way.

nuance meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

nuance in Tamil

வேலைப்பாடு, நுணுக்கம், நுட்பம், துல்லியம்

nuance in Bengali

অর্থ, সূক্ষ্ম দ্যোতনা

nuance in Malayalam

fine distinction, subtle difference, gradation
ഈഷദ്ഭേദം, അല്പഭേദം, ലഘുവ്യത്യാസം, ലേശവ്യത്യാസം, സൂക്ഷ്മഭേദം, വ്യതിരിക്തത

nuance in Kannada

ಕಿರುಮಾರ‍್ಪು
More languagesFewer languages
nuance in Indonesian
nuansa
nuance in Persian
ظرافت zerâfat, ریزهکاری rize-kâri
nuance in Vietnamese
sắc thái

Examples of nuance in a sentence

  • The term has more of a nuance of marking or commemorating an important occasion.
  • He was struck by her nuances, which did not seem so subtle after all.
  • These nuances are very important to psychogeographers (psychogeophysics and cryptoforestry, to provide just two examples).

All 40 example sentences with nuance

Forms of nuance

Noun
pluralnuances
Verb
third-person singular presentnuances
present participlenuancing
past participlenuanced
pastnuanced

Plural of nuance: nuances

Origin of nuance

Borrowed from French nuance (“nuance, shade, hue”). Omitting several steps, from Latin nūbēs. Compare typologically Italian sfumatura (< Latin fūmus).

Words formed from nuance

Questions about nuance

What does nuance mean?
Nuance means a minor distinction.
What is nuance in Tamil?
Nuance in Tamil is வேலைப்பாடு, நுணுக்கம், நுட்பம். See Nuance meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is nuance?
Nuance can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce nuance?
Nuance is pronounced /ˈnjuː.ɑːns/ (UK).
What is the plural of nuance?
The plural of nuance is nuances.

Words near nuance in the dictionary

  1. nu-jazz
  2. nu-male
  3. nu-males
  4. nu-metal
  5. Nuala
  6. nuance
  7. nuanced
  8. nuancedly
  9. nuanceless
  10. nuancely
  11. nuances

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nuance (page history and authors); nuance (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nuance (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nuance (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); nuance (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-nuance.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Simplificationalizer-nuance.wav, en-au-nuance.ogg.

Cite this entry: “nuance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nuance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.