When referring to slight differences or distinctions, the words subtlety and nuance are very close synonyms! A subtlety is a fine-grain distinction. The word nuance comes from the French word meaning “shade” or “hue,” and is used to discuss slight shades of difference in expression and meaning as well as in color and tone. There is a degree of elusiveness suggested by this term: just as it might be difficult to pinpoint the exact point at which a color in a rainbow changes from one to the next, so the nuances in a person’s tone might be difficult to demarcate or distinguish.

Someone who is composed is calm and collected—they have their feelings under control in a given moment. Someone who is unflappable is utterly unshakable or imperturbable, especially in a crisis. Someone with an unflappable demeanor, for instance, is remarkable for their even-keeled conduct and deportment, even when it might seem perfectly reasonable to the rest of us to make a flap!

To predict something is foretell it, often but not always with precision of calculation, knowledge, or shrewd inference from facts or experience. To augur something is to divine or predict it, as from omens. Augur also means to bode, as in the case of a consumer trend that augurs well for a company. Augur is easy enough to find in contemporary writing and speech, but it is rooted in ancient mysteries: the noun augur, which predates the verb in English, refers to one of a group of Roman officials charged with observing and interpreting omens for guidance in public affairs.