over-subtle

True wisdom is to keep the heart and soul aloof from over-subtle wits.

The Bacchantes 2008

True wisdom is to keep the heart and soul aloof from over-subtle wits.

The Bacchantes 2008

Last year, I picked enough for a mulberry ice cream, which was nice, if a bit over-subtle.

Elderflower Ice Cream and Undisciplined Digressions Lindy 2007

Last year, I picked enough for a mulberry ice cream, which was nice, if a bit over-subtle.

Toast: Lindy 2007

Laws, ethics, Spitzfindigkeit or kopdreying, to employ the sweeter cartoonery of Yiddish, which means exactly what it sounds: twisting the mind in increasingly over-subtle acts of exegesis—and let nature go hang.

Kalooki Nights Howard Jacobson 2006

It is over-subtle; it is not true; it has no beauty of any kind.

Browning's Heroines Ethel Colburn Mayne

I was intolerably dull, I was abundantly entertaining, I was over-subtle, I was painfully obvious, I was exceedingly humorous, and I lacked all humour.

Walking-Stick Papers Robert Cortes Holliday

They should be thankful it was decent weather, said one of the sailors; the vessel didn't roll any faster in bad weather, but it rolled much farther in the same time -- a distinction which struck Jimmie as over-subtle.

Jimmie Higgins Upton Sinclair 1923

Coldly truthful in its descriptions of battles and camps, crisp and pointed in its dialogue, penetrating, if not over-subtle, in its character analysis, sensible in its plot, and in its general temper alert and sophisticated, it is still almost as convincing as it was once precocious.

Chapter 6. Howells and Realism. Section 1. New Frontiers and Old Settlements 1921

My story was getting over-subtle for the infant mind.

The Holiday Round 1919