Elegant, a.
Etymology: [L. elegans, -antis; akin to eligere to pick out, choose, select: cf. F. élégant. See Elect.]
1. Very choice, and hence, pleasing to good taste; characterized by grace, propriety, and refinement, and the absence of every thing offensive; exciting admiration and approbation by symmetry, completeness, freedom from blemish, and the like; graceful; tasteful and highly attractive; as, elegant manners; elegant style of composition; an elegant speaker; an elegant structure. A more diligent cultivation of elegant literature. Prescott.
2. Exercising a nice choice; discriminating beauty or sensitive to beauty; as, elegant taste.
Syn. -- Tasteful; polished; graceful; refined; comely; handsome; richly ornamental.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for elegant; he lists it under beautiful, fine, polite, tasteful.
Where he writes about it:
Elegant (L. elegans, select) refers to that assemblage of qualities which makes anything choice to persons of culture and refinement; it refers to the lighter, finer elements of beauty in form or motion, especially denoting that which exhibits faultless taste and perfection of finish. — from tasteful
That which is elegant is made so not merely by nature, but by art and culture; a woodland dell may be beautiful or picturesque, but would not ordinarily be termed elegant. — from tasteful
Tasteful refers to that in which the element of taste is more prominent, standing, as it were, more by itself, while in elegant it is blended as part of the whole. — from tasteful
Exquisite denotes the utmost perfection of the elegant in minute details; we speak of an elegant garment, an exquisite lace. — from tasteful