These words refer to what reflects rare beauty or delicacy in taste, fashion or manners. Exquisite is extremely vague as a superlative used in any of these situations; to these notions it adds overtones of what is consummate in its execution, admirable in effect, and gives evidence of extreme sensitivity, discrimination and fastidiousness: exquisite miniatures showing the greatest delicacy in their use of colour; a ballet cancer of exquisite skill; an exquisite day, breathtaking in its beauty. The word can also refer to what is keen or acute: suffering the most exquisite torment.

Polished is metaphorical as it applies here, suggesting a correctness in manner and an elegance of grooming that has been carefully learnt or inculcated: the polished society of the 1890s. The word can also refer to technical facility: a polished performance of the exquisite sonata. Refined extends the implications of polished to a larger range of uses. It can refer beyond manners to aesthetic excellence or taste in the widest sense, often suggesting the arduous process of separating what is valuable from what is dross: refined manners; a refined style, free of flaw or eccentricity; observing that art was nothing more than life refined . Often, however, the word can refer to what has become too rigidly correct, mannered, lifeless or genteel: a refined and bloodless prose style; refined taste that found the explosive complexities of Greek drama too tick for its palate.

Soigné , borrowed from the French, places an emphasis on good grooming. It stresses elegance and modishness as well: the latest soigné fashions for women. Graceful most vividly suggests physical bearing or movement that is lithe, agile and lyrical: a graceful walk. It can also indicate delicately smooth execution in the arts: a graceful modelling of the female nude. It can point as well to manners that show poise, calmness and correctness: her graceful way of making introductions. Fine , in this context, can refer to minute, delicate or perfectly executed ornamentation or detailing: the fine carving of the filigree scroll framing the bas-relief. It can also suggest something refined or of high merit: fine manners; the fine arts. Less strictly, of course, it can be a vague superlative for anything one regards favourably: a fine film; a fine painter; a fine friend.