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diplomacy

nounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//dɪˈpləʊməsi//
  • Canada//dɪˈploʊməsi//
  • Australia//dɪˈpləʉməsi//

The art and practice of conducting international relations by negotiating alliances, treaties, agreements etc., bilaterally or multilaterally, between states and sometimes international organizations, or even between polities with varying status, such as those of monarchs and their princely vassals.

noun

  1. 1

    The art and practice of conducting international relations by negotiating alliances, treaties, agreements etc., bilaterally or multilaterally, between states and sometimes international organizations, or even between polities with varying status, such as those of monarchs and their princely vassals.

    National diplomacy typically deploys its dexterity to secure advantage for one's nation.

  2. 2

    Tact and subtle skill in dealing with people so as to avoid or settle hostility.

    As I was talking with many relatives I have in this town I got assaulted with intense probing of whom I was married to, then who is your girlfriend, then it was what do you do for a job? Most of these relatives don't know I'm gay and deflecting these questions put to the test the art of diplomacy.

Etymology

From French diplomatie, a back-formation from diplomatique, ultimately from Latin diploma (“a letter of recommendation or authority”); see diploma.

Forms

plural
diplomacies
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).