Sophistication vs. Elegance — What's the Difference?

Sophistication has come to mean a few things, but its original uses were a pejorative, derived from sophist, and included the idea of admixture or adulteration. Today, as researched by Faye Hammill, it is common as a measure of refinement—displaying good taste, wisdom and subtlety rather than crudeness, stupidity and vulgarity.

Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity. Elegance is frequently used as a standard of tastefulness, particularly in visual design, decorative arts, literature, science, and the aesthetics of mathematics.

To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly

The quality of being graceful and stylish in appearance or manner

To make more complex or refined

The quality of being pleasingly ingenious and simple; neatness

To mislead or corrupt (a person).

Refinement, grace, and beauty in movement, appearance, or manners.

To make impure; adulterate.

Tasteful opulence in form, decoration, or presentation.

To use sophistry.

Restraint and grace of style.

A sophisticated person.

Scientific exactness and precision.

Enlightenment or education.

Something elegant.

Cultivated intellectual worldliness; savoir-faire.

Grace, refinement, and beauty in movement, appearance, or manners.

Deceptive logic; sophistry.

Restraint and grace of style.

Falsification or contamination.

The beauty of an idea characterized by minimalism and intuitiveness while preserving exactness and precision.

Complexity.

A refinement or luxury.

Ability to deal with complexity.

The state or quality of being elegant; beauty as resulting from choice qualities and the complete absence of what deforms or impresses unpleasantly; grace given by art or practice; fine polish; refinement; - said of manners, language, style, form, architecture, etc.

(archaic) The act of sophisticating; adulteration.

That which is elegant; that which is tasteful and highly attractive.

The act of sophisticating; adulteration; as, the sophistication of drugs.

A refined quality of gracefulness and good taste

Uplifting enlightenment

A deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone

Being expert or having knowledge of some technical subject;

The quality or character of being intellectually sophisticated through cultivation or experience or disillusionment

Falsification by the use of sophistry; misleading by means of specious fallacies;