different between traceless vs graceless

English

Etymology

trace +? -less

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?t?e?sl?s/, /?t??e?sl?s/

Adjective

traceless (comparative more traceless, superlative most traceless)

1. That has no traces
2. That cannot be traced; untraceable

Translations

Anagrams

• scelerats

English

Etymology

From Middle English graceles; equivalent to grace +? -less.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???e?sl?s/

Adjective

graceless (comparative more graceless, superlative most graceless)

1. Without grace.
   • 1881, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sonnet XXXII, "Equal Troth," in The House of Life, [1]:

     Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love; / For how should I be loved as I love thee? — / I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely / All gifts that with thy queenship best behove; — [...]

   • 1972, Roland Barthes, "Toys" in Mythologies (1957), translated by Annette Lavers, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, p. 54,

     Current toys are made of a graceless material, the product of chemistry, not of nature.

   • 1995, Susan Sontag, "The Art of Fiction No. 143," Interview with Edward Hirsch published in The Paris Review, No. 137, Winter, 1995, p. 7,

     [Hirsch:] Do you mind being called an intellectual? [Sontag:] Well, one never likes to be called anything. [...] I suppose there will always be a presumption of graceless oddity—especially if one is a woman.

2. Lacking gracefulness
   • 1961, Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy, New York: Signet, p. 64,

     The boy sketched his roughhewn young contadino just in from the fields, naked except for his brache, kneeling to take off his clodhoppers; the flesh tones a sunburned amber, the figure clumsy, with graceless bumpkin muscles; but the face transfused with light as the young lad gazed up at John.

3. (archaic) Unfortunate.

Synonyms

• clumsy

Antonyms

• graceful

Derived terms

• gracelessly
• gracelessness