Extremely beautiful, delicate, or finely made. It can also describe very strong or carefully balanced feelings, including pleasure or pain.
From Latin *exquisitus* ‘carefully sought out, excellent’, from *exquirere* ‘to search out’, from *ex-* (‘out’) and *quaerere* (‘to seek’). It originally suggested something chosen after careful searching.
Exquisite beauty isn’t just pretty; it feels like the result of intense, almost obsessive selection. That’s why we also talk about ‘exquisite pain’—it’s not mild or vague, it’s sharpened to a fine point.
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