When checking to see if I’d featured this useful term before, I found FOUR pages of entries that contained “nuance” in the text but none that gave it a starring role. Time to fix that! Clearly, I love this word.
Frankly, I love anything nuances. You may know my hatred of the Superhero genre of film: I can tell you the plot after 10 minutes for most of them. Boring! They contain some clever dialogue but little mystery or surprise: those are the soul of nuanced stories.
So few things in our world–whatever zealots of any stripe say–are binary. Instead, we encounter subtle shades of differences, slightly varying experiences, a spectrum of personalities, not a series of pigeon-holes. Just put down the phone some twilight and watch a sunset unfold. No two are identical.
The Online Etymology Dictionary notes the origin of our word, “slight or delicate degree of difference in expression, feeling, opinion, etc.,” 1781, from French nuance “slight difference, shade of color.”
And there we have it. Now get out of your chair and enjoy some nuanced experiences outdoors as Spring unfolds. They are as close on the UR campus as a stroll around Westhampton Lake as the leaves unfurl.
Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. Want to write a guest entry? Let me know!
See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.
Image: Publicdomainpictures.net, “Everglades Sunset”