More and more, I’m hearing people use the word “graceful” when they mean “gracious.” As in:
“She congratulated her opponent on his victory, showing how graceful she can be.”
Have enough people made this mistake to legitimate it as an alternate definition?
For me personally, I absolutely know I can be gracious, but I fall down too much to ever be considered graceful.
~VOW
“Graceful” isn’t really wrong to start with, though. “Graceful” means more than just what a ballerina is.
I’ve always used graceful to indicate physical motions, and gracious to indicate demeanor.
This is the same for me.
It’s probably in the same realm as the mistake sometimes made between “legitimate” and “legitimise”…
I’ve always regarded graceful as meaning elegance or smoothness of style, physical or otherwise; “he gave in gracefully”, for example. Being gracious is being nice or polite.
You can gracefully slice someone’s head off, but you can’t graciously do so.
Unless they’ve asked for it; then you can graciously oblige.
“Gracious” refers to one’s behaviour with regard other people; “graceful” refers to one’s behaviour with regard one’s self. You can certaily be a gracious klutz or a graceful asshole.