Exquisite means beautiful in a fine, delicate, perfect way. Exquisite embroidery, an exquisite little house, exquisite taste.
It suits small and detailed things rather than large ones — exquisite jewellery rather than an exquisite mountain. It is also used of intensity: exquisite pain, exquisite agony, where exquisite means acute and precise rather than pleasant. That use is medical as well as literary. Note exquisitely, and that the stress can fall on either the first or second syllable, both accepted.
1adjectiveexquisiteBeautiful in a fine, delicate way.
“The old lace wedding dress was exquisite, with tiny flowers stitched by hand.”
2adjectiveacuteAcute and intense, of pain or feeling.
“She felt an exquisite pain as the dentist touched the nerve.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
exquisite is a quality of fineness.
Latin exquisitus means sought out, from exquirere — ex-, out, plus quaerere, to seek. Something exquisite has been searched out rather than found, which explains why the word suits rarity and detail.
Latin
exquīsītus — to be outsought
English, today
exquisite
Built from
From Latin exquīsītus (“to be outsought”), perfect passive participle of exquīrō (“to outseek”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA