Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The condition or quality of being graceful; elegance of manner or deportment; beauty with dignity in manner, motion, or countenance.
  • noun A state of grace; excellence.
  • noun Graciousness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state of being graceful.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun beautiful carriage

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

graceful +‎ -ness

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word gracefulness.

Examples

  • Marionettentheater, whose gracefulness is "not an end in itself, but a device to impress the teacher":

    Professing Literature: John Guillory's Misreading of Paul de Man 2005

  • He went through his duties with untiring assiduity, and with a kind of gracefulness, which by mere description can scarcely be made intelligible to those who are unacquainted with the manners of the Asiatics.

    Eothen 2003

  • Children, careless of pleasing, and only anxious to amuse themselves, are often very graceful; and the nobility who have mostly lived with inferiours, and always had the command of money, acquire a graceful case of deportment, which should rather be termed habitual grace of body, than that superiour gracefulness which is truly the expression of the mind.

    A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 2002

  • They had lost somehow or other that look of gracefulness which is so characteristic of them in their own country, and on a closer examination I found the cause to be their being clad in at least a dozen _kimonos_, [2] put on one over the other to keep the cold out.

    Corea or Cho-sen The Land of the Morning Calm Arnold Henry Savage Landor 1894

  • Children, careless of pleasing, and only anxious to amuse themselves, are often very graceful; and the nobility who have mostly lived with inferiours, and always had the command of money, acquire a graceful case of deportment, which should rather be termed habitual grace of body, than that superiour gracefulness which is truly the expression of the mind.

    A vindication of the rights of woman 1892

  • He went through his duties with untiring assiduity, and with a kind of gracefulness, which by mere description can scarcely be made intelligible to those who are unacquainted with the manners of the

    Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East Alexander William Kinglake 1850

  • Children, careless of pleasing, and only anxious to amuse themselves, are often very graceful; and the nobility who have mostly lived with inferiours, and always had the command of money, acquire a graceful ease of deportment, which should rather be termed habitual grace of body, than that superiour gracefulness which is truly the expression of the mind.

    Chap. V 1792

  • "gracefulness" in landscape, I should send him neither to Italy nor to

    Selections From the Works of John Ruskin John Ruskin 1859

  • They are immoderately fond of dancing, and indeed it is almost the only amusement they partake of: but even in this they discover great want of taste and elegance, and seldom appear with that gracefulness and ease, which these movements are so calculated to display.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • It is fiercely vigorous, but in its execution there is no attempt at gracefulness; no attention to positions, of which the old dancing-masters told us there were five; there was little attempt at step—it was simply ‘jigging’ or as sometimes called clog dancing.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.