The phrase "a tender thing" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is gentle, delicate, or evokes feelings of compassion or affection.
Example: "In the midst of chaos, she found solace in a tender thing, like the warmth of a child's embrace."
Alternatives: "a gentle thing" or "a delicate thing".
And as proved by the recent RSC revival of Ben Power's A Tender Thing – a play that uses the text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to tell what might have happened to the lovers had they not committed suicide – mature love can be just as heartbreaking as teenage passion.
"I just thought: what a tender thing for my dad to say".
Sometimes she saw her life as a tender thing that was separate from herself, a tiny animal she had happened upon by chance one day and decided to raise.
The human psyche is a tender thing, bruised easily – and gardening can often be a good salve.
Kathryn Hunter stars as an elderly Juliet saying goodbye to her Romeo in A Tender Thing at the Swan in Stratford.
This is the second time in 12 months that Romeo and Juliet has starred elderly lovers: Morris and his co-adapter, Sean O'Connor, have been thinking about this production for years, but Ben Power hit the boards first, last year, with A Tender Thing, a reworking commissioned by the RSC.
But a well-cooked clam is a toothsome, tender thing, full of that magical stuff known as clam liquor.
A simple, tender thing which had never happened before - although the New York Daily News pointed out that Paul Keating, the Australian prime minister, tried it back in 1992 and was promptly nicknamed the Lizard of Oz.
I've carried a torch for him ever since he had an unexpectedly tender thing with Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3, before he got done in and she returned to glumly taking out the space trash.
You realise it only takes a misplaced G# for the whole tender thing to fall apart.
Such a virgin is the speaker in Carter's poem, but she is not a tender little thing.
