noun
- adroitness and delicacy of performance
- the ability to handle delicate and difficult situations skillfully and diplomatically
- cunning; skill; artfulness; craft
- Bridge an attempt to take a trick with a lower card while holding a higher card not in sequence with it, made in the hope that the intervening card is in the hand of the opponent who has already played
Origin:
Fr < OFr fin, fine
transitive verb finessed, finessing
- to manage, bring about, or deal with by finesse: sometimes with into
- to evade or bypass (a problem, issue, etc.)
- Bridge
- to make a finesse with (a specified card)
- to play a card lower than (the specified intervening card) in making a finesse