Exquisite (pronounced ek-skwi-zit or ik-skwiz-it)
(1) Of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence and often associated with objects or great delicacy; of rare excellence of production or execution, as works of art or workmanship; beautiful, delicate, discriminating, perfect.
(2) Extraordinarily fine or admirable; consummate.
(3) Intense; acute, or keen, as pleasure or pain; keenly or delicately sensitive or responsive; exceeding; extreme; in a bad or a good sense (eg as exquisite pleasure or exquisite pain).
(4) Recherché; far-fetched; abstruse (a now rare early meaning which to some extent survives in surrealist’s exercise “exquisite corpse”).
(5) Of particular refinement or elegance, as taste, manners, etc or persons.
(6) A man excessively concerned about clothes, grooming etc; a dandy or coxcomb.
(7) Ingeniously devised or thought out (obsolete).
(8) Carefully adjusted; precise; accurate; exact (now less common except as an adverb.
(9) Of delicate perception or close and accurate discrimination; not easy to satisfy; exact; fastidious (related to the sense of “exquisite judgment, taste, or discernment”.
1400–1450: From the Late Middle English exquisite (carefully selected), from the Latin exquīsītus (excellent; meticulous, chosen with care (and literally “carefully sought out”)), perfect passive participle of exquīrō (to seek out), originally the past participle of exquīrere (to ask about, examine) the construct being ex- + -quīrere, a combining form of quaerere (to seek). The construct of exquīrō was ex- + quaerō (seek). The ex- prefix was applied to words in Middle English borrowed from the Middle French and was derived from the Latin ex- (out of, from) and was from the primitive Indo-European eǵ- & eǵs-. It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἐξ (ex-, out of, from) from the Transalpine Gaulish ex- (out), the Old Irish ess- (out), the Old Church Slavonic изъ (izŭ) (out), the Russian из (iz) (from, out of). Exquisite is a noun & adjective, exquisiteness & exquisitiveness are nouns and exquisitively & exquisitely are adverbs; the noun plural is exquisites.
Everything about the Lancia Fulvia (1965-1976) appeared exquisitely delicate but the little machine was tough and was for half-a-decade a dominant force in international rallying. A Lancia legend is that when the hood was opened on one of the first to reach the US, a mechanic, brought up on a diet of hefty V8s, upon seeing the tiny, 1.2 litre (75 cubic inch) narrow-angle V4 is said to have remarked: “Don’t ask me, take it to a jeweler.”
The etymology of the Latin quaerō (seek) is mysterious. It may be from the Proto-Italic kwaizeō, from the primitive Indo-European kweh (to acquire) so cognates may include the Ancient Greek πέπαμαι (pépamai) (to get, acquire), the Old Prussian quoi (I/you want) & quāits (desire), the Lithuanian kviẽsti (to invite) and possibly the Albanian kam (I have). Some have suggested the source being the primitive Indo-European kwoys & kweys (to see) but there has been little support for this. The authoritative Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs (LIV)), the standard etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European languages, suggests it’s a derivation of hzeys (to seek, ask), via the form koaiseo. "Exquisite corpse" is a calque of the French cadavre exquis (literally “exquisite cadaver”). Dating from 1925, it was coined by French surrealists to describe a method of loosely structured constructivism on the model of the parlour game consequences; fragments of text (or images) are created by different people according to pre-set rules, then joined together to create a complete text. The name comes from the first instance in 1925: Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau (The exquisite corpse will drink new wine). Exquisite corpse is noted as a precursor to both post-modernism and deconstructionist techniques.
Although not infrequently it appears in the same sentence as the word “unique”, exquisite can be more nuanced, the comparative “more exquisite, the superlative most exquisite” and there has certainly been a change in the pattern of use. In English, it originally was applied to any thing (good or bad, art or torture, diseases or good health), brought to a highly wrought condition, tending among the more puritanical to disapprobation. The common modern meaning (of consummate and delightful excellence) dates from the late 1570s while the noun (a dandy, a foppish man) seems first to have been used in 1819. One interesting variant which didn’t survive was exquisitous (not natural, but procured by art), appearing in dictionaries in the early eighteenth centuries but not since. The pronunciation of exquisite has undergone a rapid change from ek-skwi-zit to ik-skwiz-it, the stress shifting to the second syllable. The newer pronunciation attracted the inevitable criticism but is now the most common form on both sides of the Atlantic and use seems not differentiated by class.
The exquisite wimp: Baldur Benedikt von Schirach
Exquisite is used almost exclusively as an adjective, applied typically to objects or performances but it’s also a noun, albeit one always rare. As a noun it was used to describe men who inhabited that grey area of being well dressed, well coiffured, well mannered and somewhat effeminate without being obviously homosexual; it was a way of hinting at something without descending to the explicit. PG Wodehouse (1881-1975) applied it thus in Sam the Sudden (1925) and historians Ann (1938-2021) & John Tusa (b 1936) in The Nuremberg Trial (1983) found no better word to apply to former Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, noting (as did his many enemies in the party) his "all-white bedroom" and propensity to pen poor poetry. The companion word to describe a similar chap without of necessity the same hint of effeminacy is “aesthete”. In The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992), Brigadier General Telford Taylor (1908–1998; lead US counsel at the Nuremberg Trial) wrote of him that: “at thirty-nine, was the youngest and, except perhaps for Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) and Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953; Nazi propagandist), the weakest of the defendants. If wimps had then been spoken of, Schirach would have been so styled.”
Von Schirach went on trial before the IMT (International Military Tribunal) in the first Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), an event the author Rebecca West (1892–1983) attended in her capacity as a journalist and among her impressions she wrote of him, admitting she was at first “startled” because “…he was like a woman in a way not common among men who look like women. It was as if a neat and mousy governess sat there, not pretty but with never a hair out of place, and always to be trusted never to intrude when there were visitors: as it might be Jane Eyre.” Although indicted also under Count 1 (conspiracy to commit crimes against peace), for his role as head (1931-1940) of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), von Schirach was convicted only under Count 4 (crimes against humanity) for his part in deporting Viennese Jews to the death camps while Gauleiter (district party leader) and Reichsstatthalter (Governor) of Vienna (1940-1945). Cunningly, and not without ostentation, he admitted some guilt for his role in “corrupting German youth” although by that he meant the political indoctrination to which he subjected them, rather than conduct many in the Nazi party liked to hint he enjoyed with the boys under his command; however defined, it’s certain he corrupted more youth than Socrates (circa 470–399 BC). Applying common law principles, the IMT found his actions as head of the Hitler youth didn’t reach the threshold of “conspiracy” and thus acquitted him on Count 1, his 20 year sentence imposed for his actions in Vienna. The preparation for the trial had been rushed and had subsequently discovered evidence against him been presented at the trial, doubtlessly and deservedly he’d have been hanged. Had that sentence been handed down, whether like Göring he’d have followed Socrates and taken hemlock, will never be known.
Exquisite: A style guide
The gown was said to have a recommended retail price (RRP) of Stg£4,040 (US$7300). The occasion was the launch of the charitable organization One Family, dedicated to combating child trafficking. While there was a fussiness about the detailing, the quality of the construction was obvious and successfully to use, at this scale, a pattern of this intricacy is not easy and demands a skilled eye. On the move, it swished around nicely and although the whims of critics can be hard to predict, on the night, most seemed to like this and it was a perhaps welcome relief from the expanses of skin of the "naked dress" movement, then beginning to dominate red carpets.
Within the one critique, the word exquisite can appear, used as a neutral descriptor (an expression of extent), a paean to beauty and even an ironic dismissal. A gown for example can be “exquisitely detailed” but that doesn’t of necessity imply elegance although that would be the case of something said to be an “exquisite design”. That said, most were drawn to the Lindsay Lohan's Gucci gown in some way, the references to Jane Austen (1775–1817) many (although historians of fashion might note Gucci’s creation as something evocative more of recent films made of Ms Austen's novels than anything representative of what was worn in her era) and the fabric’s patterning & restraint in the use of color produced a dreamily romantic look.
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