Sentence examples for subtle play on from inspiring English sources
A mix of two sizes of leopard-print fur were a subtle play on glamour.
It's especially tasty in onion soup, a subtle play on French onion.
Grilled prime New York steak came with lobster butter (a subtle play on surf and turf), horseradish-zapped mashed potatoes and carrot spaghetti.
Add the delicate contrast of matte and shiny materials and the subtle play on transparency with the use of semisheer and perforated fabrics, and this young designer proved that he was brimming with champion ideas.
It is at once sweet and monumental, like a child's drawing of a house, but also a complex, subtle play on architectural history, with allusions to such masterworks as Blenheim Palace.
This subtle play on see-through started with a skirt made of crin, or horsehair, traditionally used to stiffen a silhouette but here standing alone as a light skirt, worn with a top shaped like a T-shirt.
These instruments make a kind of sonic sea-spray on top of the larger waves of the music's energy or they're a symphonic metaphor for the infinitely subtle play of light on the surface of the water.
But the eye-poppers were a counterpoint to other, more subtle, plays on and displays of skin.
Unexpected twists, or subtle plays on words and phrases, show the subeditor's craft at its best: a power failure in a theatre became, in the Guardian, "Bad lights stop play".
It is so easy to turn a highland fling into a costume party, but for all Mr. Browne's tendency to go over the top, these clothes had some subtle plays on proportions, with elongated kilts and shorts, pleats fanning out at the back.
Eight years earlier, Vice President Walter F. Mondale said, "At least when Ronald Reagan rode off in the movies into the fiery sunset, he didn't take us with him" -- a not-so-subtle play on fears that Mr. Reagan would drag the country into war, while George Bush accused President Jimmy Carter of "inciting hatred and division among Americans" by running a "low road, hatchet road" campaign.
