Nuanced - rare?

[gromit]

From the Standard a few days ago nuance is common but nuanced is rare. Is it a contender for upgrading to common?

[anona]

I wondered the same thing.

[nineoaks]

...as did I.

[Les303]

From the Standard a few days ago nuance is common but nuanced is rare. Is it a contender for upgrading to common?

I'm a pretty simple bloke who likes to keep things ... well ... simple.
So , for what it's worth ,  my test for deciding if a word should be common or rare is how easily you can use that word in a sentence.
It wasn't to difficult for me to come up with sentences using nuance & nuances but I did struggle to imagine a plausible sentence using the word nuanced?

[birdy]

I've seen the word used occasionally, mostly in the context of a nuanced statement or article.

[anona]

One of the examples I found was "Known for her vocal range and nuanced ability, Whitney was born into a family of vocalists."

[Les303]

The occasional usage cited by Birdy & the fact that anona had to find an example where the word could be used in a sentence (thanks anona ), I reckon,  supports my opinion that the word is not commonly used & therefore should remain classified as rare.

[anona]

Les: if you are serious, I don't think you're being quite fair. What word other than "find" should I have used? It took very little researching (too intense for what I did)/browsing/looking to come across the one I gave. Lots of places give definitions of words, but not so many give examples.

I could have given you remembered examples of the word; in fact I did, and deleted them before posting: they would not have been precise, full quotations and I believed you would find an independent and attributable example more convincing. The page on which I "found" the Whitney quote gave three examples and I looked no further.

Sorry if you were just being mischievous and I misread you.

[Les303]

Me .. mischievous .. never!!!

Actually, anona , i was just trying to make the point that if a word is common to me then i would usually have little trouble in making up a plausible sentence using that word in an every day context.
I knew that there would be many examples out there ( of sentences using the word nuanced ) but the point is that i was unable to make one up myself.

I am sure that you also would have little trouble in making up a sentence using nuance or nuances however as you had to find an example using " nuanced * by googling it then i thought that we were actually on the same page.

So are you saying that in your opinion nuanced should be common even though you are unable to use it in a sentence that you can make up yourself without resorting to remembered quotations or google?

I can just imagine the nuances of your facial expression as you read this post but please do not take offence as i am definitely not trying to have a go at you (one of my favourite & nicest forumites ) but simply trying to explain my silly method of validating my own opinion about any  particular word being classed as common or rare which is irrelevant anyway as Alan will be the one making the determination.

[Alan W]

Les, as I understand anona, she was able to make up examples, in fact she did, but then decided it would be more useful to give an example that had already been published, which I tend to agree with.

A risk in making up examples is that you might come up with something that nobody would ever really say. Once somebody queried why assort is a rare word. It would be easy enough to come up with an "every day" usage example: "She decided to assort some biscuits [or cookies if you prefer] onto a plate." But nobody actually uses assort like that. When I checked in a collection of published text, I found 254 cases of assorted, but only one of assort, and that was in a scientific publication. Hence assort remains rare.

When I did a quick check in the newspaper here in Melbourne, the Age, I found lots of examples of nuanced, including two from today alone, so there could be a strong case for making it common, but I'll look into it more fully some other time.

[yelnats]

Did you also check the Sun*? Maybe 2 "nuanced" in the last year!

*A News Corp paper.

[mkenuk]

Did you also check the Sun*?

*A News Corp paper.

If you're referring to the Murdoch-owned rag which passes for a newspaper in UK, it's unlikely that any of its 'readers' will know this word. For the most part, their vocabulary is limited to words of four letters and one syllable.

[Les303]

Les, as I understand anona, she was able to make up examples, in fact she did, but then decided it would be more useful to give an example that had already been published, which I tend to agree with.

A risk in making up examples is that you might come up with something that nobody would ever really say. Once somebody queried why assort is a rare word. It would be easy enough to come up with an "every day" usage example: "She decided to assort some biscuits [or cookies if you prefer] onto a plate." But nobody actually uses assort like that. When I checked in a collection of published text, I found 254 cases of assorted, but only one of assort, and that was in a scientific publication. Hence assort remains rare.

When I did a quick check in the newspaper here in Melbourne, the Age, I found lots of examples of nuanced, including two from today alone, so there could be a strong case for making it common, but I'll look into it more fully some other time.

Thanks for that very clear explanation Alan.

I was in fact trying to use the same logic with " nuanced " as you did with " assort ".
I suspect that the examples that anona had come up with for " nuanced " would have been phrases " that nobody would never really say " as was the case with your example for  " assort " which is why she elected to find a published quote.

The only difference that I can see here is that I was obviously wrong in thinking that it would be quite difficult to find "every day usage " of  " nuanced " but you were able to achieve that by having a quick look in the newspaper.

Hey gromit , thanks for your original suggestion , look at all the strife you got me into.

[2dognight]

Would you believe it.  Reading a book called The Apple Orchard by Pete Brown

On page 124  there was a sentence with word nuanced !!

definitely common

[Les303]

For some strange reason , i'm getting a vague sense that I  might have got this one entirely wrong.