Brought to light

Nuances are the little things that change or add to the usual meaning of something.  Nuance can be applied to almost any situation.  A person can refer to nuance of color, taste, texture, art, photography, lighting, culture, and word meanings.  It's a flexible word in its application.

It's also a rather modern word, historically speaking.  It was nearly 1800 before the word broke onto the scene.  The French had used the word nue for a long time because it had derived from Latin.  The French had dropped a b from the word.  The Romans had used the word nube, but the French used a glottal stop for the letter b, so b dropped from its spelling.

The Romans were very superstitious about things that happened in the sky.  Clouds were a part of the sky and the presence or absence of clouds usually meant something.  The color of the clouds also changed the meanings of things.  The French made the same application and added an r to the word to make it a verb (nuer).  The French could cloud or shade things like situations or pictures when they painted them.  The term felt natural to use for a British man, then, to adopt the root of the word nu, take off the er verb ending of the French word and put a noun ending in its place, ance.

One of the greatest tools in detecting deception is to analyze something according to the nuances of a person's regular speech. Nuances of definition are important, so synonyms for adjectives, adverbs, and nouns become important in spotting lies.  Nuances in verbs also change the type of action that was used, so their meaning in particular is important.  And nuances can apply to sentence length and topic change as well.

Those who weave their dangerous webs in words love to shade the meanings of the things they say.  It's easy to spot, however, when the listener is paying attention to the meanings of words.  And if a person is able to read the words of what has been said and can compare to other words being used, then the web of dangerous words can be spotted and brought to light for what it really conveys.  Nuances play the role of cameras in catching all that people deny.