Nuance

noun

A slight yet distinguishing element or facet that makes something unique
A fine or minor characteristic to something

Usage

Have you ever looked at something so intently and for so long that all the minute details started to stand out? Whether it's a beautiful piece of art or the same old view out of your office window, giving something a more analytical look is a great way to see something in a new light. Even when something initially seems mundane, if you take the time to discover its nuances, the freshly perceived shades and subtleties might make it more interesting.

A nuance is a key or defining aspect of something that is very subtle, or takes careful discernment or analysis to perceive. The squirrel in your backyard might look like every other one you’ve seen, but the nuance in the pattern of its fur might enable you to recognize it as the particular rascally rodent that stashes acorns in the roof of your garage! In other words, the subtle distinctions in its coat mark it as one specific squirrel, standing out from the dozens you might see in a day. You also might be able to tell two artists with similar aesthetics apart from the nuances of their color palette or in the shape of their brushstrokes. Without making these critical observations, one misses the principal aspects of each painter’s work and style, and a world of difference between the two is unintentionally overlooked.

A slight feature or characteristic of any kind, even if it is not crucial to understanding a thing’s nature, can also be considered a nuance. For instance, you might marvel at the nuance of this typeface, like the curvature and shape of the serifs, but it might not be enough for you to tell the difference between this and similar fonts, and you would still interpret the words just as well as if they were in any other one. In other words, you might notice the finer facets of the typeface, but they are not substantial enough for you to notice or observe them as distinguishing marks or characteristics. Whether or not the devil truly is in the details, nuance most certainly is!

Example: She was so adept with her body language that the nuance of her gestures often expressed far more than the words which accompanied them.

Example: The nuance of blue in the car’s headlights gave the beams a cool, crisp luminescence.

Example: The politician was adept at making his audience understand the nuances of a situation.

Origin

The word nuance, which first emerged in English in the late 1700s, was taken directly from the French nuance, which means “fine detail” or “tinge of color.” This was adapted from the French word nuer, meaning “to shade” or “to tint.” This derives from the Gallo-Roman word nuba and, before that, the Latin word nube, both of which mean “cloud, fog, mist.” Nube ultimately originates with the Proto-Indo-European word sneudh, which means “mist” or “fog.”

Derivative Words

Nuanced: This adjective rendering of nuance indicates when something contains subtle characteristics or components.

Example: The statue had such exquisitely nuanced features that, up close, one could observe the veins in its arms.

In Literature

From Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale:

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.

Here, Atwood muses on the imprecision that naturally attends communication through language. Every experience, sentiment, or idea that one might hope to express contains too many fine features, or nuances, to be able to adequately capture in a description to someone else.

Mnemonic

In a séance, one perceives the nuances of spirits.
To find a nuance, you often need to give it a new glance to see what you missed.
A nuance is the slightest ounce of detail.