Hue. Tint. Shade. Tone. Four words you may splash with abandon, deeming the family huddles under one beach umbrella called colour, but the terms differ. Hue, say, is a twin of colour: red or blue by another name. The others hint at tinges, what element is added to the primary hue. Add white, you make a tint; a bit of black, a shade; a dab of grey, a tone.
Such a rainbow reflects the realm of nuance, a label built on light and shade, linking to nubes in Latin, namely cloud. Eli Burnstein, a Canadian writer based in England, has helped to appreciate this spectrum, and more, via his debut Dictionary of Fine Distinctions (Union Square, 2024), where the subtitle embraces the subtle: Nuances, Niceties and Subtle Shades of Meaning.
Alanis Morissette’s use of the word “ironic” continues to be hotly debated.Credit: Getty
Unless you’re a medieval warrior, you won’t need to differentiate a catapult (which flings things via tension) from a trebuchet (via a counterweight), but anyone will benefit from dividing strategy (a general approach seeking a goal) and tactic (a specific measure to help achieve that).
Sure, you may not be hurling boulders over moats, but you’ll score more admirers if you can separate accuracy (how close you are to the mark) from precision (how finely you measure the outcome). Burnstein’s example nails the distinction: “A jar has 76 jelly beans in it. David guesses there are 125. Lucy guesses there are between 50 and 100. David is precise, but not accurate; Lucy is accurate, but not precise.”
Metaphors enhance the mini-lessons too. Take the muddle of amps and volts, say. Sparkies and scientists can skip this sentence, but I found it useful to imagine a cable carrying water (not electricity), where amp is volume, volt is “water pressure”, and watts the outflow. As for ohm, I await Burnstein’s sequel.
Sexologists could split kink (an unorthodox sexual preference) and fetish (unorthodox sexual need) with one hand tied behind their back. Just as music buffs are au fait with concerto (soloist plus orchestra) and symphony (orchestra as one). While I know my typeface (like Arial) from my font (like Arial Bold Italic), I did thrill to distinguish ethics (the rational principles of right and wrong) over morality: your felt sense of the same.
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Tone and context help to separate that other chestnut pair of irony and sarcasm. Struggling to complete a marathon, say, then calling the ordeal a piece of cake? Irony. Or is that sarcasm? Nuances can be cloudy. Burnstein makes a noble effort, defining sarcasm as weaponised irony, designed to insult, while irony is more neutral in shade, saying one thing but meaning another.
Jealousy and envy are also close cousins, the subtlety losing traction over the years. In a pure sense, I may envy my neighbour’s car, while I’m jealous he takes my wife – not me – for a spin. Besides, what the hell’s going on there?
