嚴譯之「雅」，指規範文言，即秦漢以前通用的文言，其修辭特點是精煉而豐富，簡潔而深刻，明晰而典雅，用於《天演論》，集中表現為用字、用詞、造句、謀篇等組織方面和對偶、用典等修辭方面。

The ELEGANCE proposed by Yanfu refers to the standard ancient Chinese, i.e. the very language used before the dynasties of Qin and Han. It is concise, profound and elegant in rhetoric features. As for Evolution and Ethics, the language expresses itself in language organization aspect such as the diction of characters, words, sentences and discourse and in rhetoric aspects such as antithesis and allusion.