exquisite

From Latin exquīsītus, perfect passive participle of exquīrō (“seek out”).

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• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪkˈskwɪzɪt/, /ˈɛkskwɪzɪt/

exquisite (comparative more exquisite, superlative most exquisite)

1. Especially fine or pleasing; exceptional.

   They sell good coffee and pastries, but their chocolate is exquisite.

   Sourav Ganguly scored an exquisite century in his debut Test match.

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter I, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.

2. (obsolete) Carefully adjusted; precise; accurate; exact.
3. Recherché; far-fetched; abstruse.
4. Of special beauty or rare excellence.
5. Exceeding; extreme; keen, in a bad or a good sense.

   exquisite pain or pleasure

6. Of delicate perception or close and accurate discrimination; not easy to satisfy; exact; fastidious.

   exquisite judgment, taste, or discernment

   • 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC:

     his books of Oriental languages, wherein he was exquisite

• beautiful, delicate, discriminating, perfect

• exquisite corpse

exquisite (plural exquisites)

1. (rare) Fop, dandy. [from early 20th c.]
   • 1849, Alexander Mackay, The western world; or, travels in the United States in 1846-87, page 93:

     It is impossible to meet with a more finished coxcomb than a Broadway exquisite, or a “Broadway swell,” which is the designation attached to him on the spot.

   • 1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 287:

     When this bejewelled exquisite lounged through the streets playing on his flute, puffing at a cigar, and smelling at a nosegay, the people whom he met threw themselves on the earth before him and prayed to him with sighs and tears.

   • 1925, P. G. Wodehouse, Sam the Sudden, Random House, London:2007, p. 42.

     So striking was his appearance that two exquisites, emerging from the Savoy Hotel and pausing on the pavement to wait for a vacant taxi, eyed him with pained disapproval as he approached, and then, starting, stared in amazement.

     'Good Lord!' said the first exquisite.

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exquisite

1. inflection of exquisit:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

exquīsīte

1. vocative masculine singular of exquīsītus

• “exquisite”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers