A good case of this kind, I think, would be given by the Victorian matron saying
"You can't take Amanda for long walks, Mr. Jones; she's _delicate_".  The word has
two senses (to be sure, the N.E.D. gives a dozen, of which only five are obsoltete,
but there are two groups of senses which make the contrast here) and I suppose the
lady to assert a connection between them.  "Refined girls are sickly" is the assertion,
and this gnomic way of putting it is a way of implying "as you ought to know". I
choose this case partly to point out that a stock equation may be quite temporary;
this combination of meanings in the word seems to be a Victorian one only.  You might
think the expectation that young ladies will be unfit to walk was enough to produce
it; and that the expectation merely follows from tight-lacing; but the eighteenth-century
young ladies also had waists, and would agree that long walks were rather vulgar,
and yet this use of the word would be "out of period" if you were writing a pastiche.
The reason seems to be that in the eighteenth century the old meaning "fastidious"
was still knocking about, and even the meaning "luxurious, self-indulgent" was not
yet sufficiently forgotten.  For the suggestion of a high moral tone in the Victorian
use it has to be entirely forgotten. Now it is clear that _refined_ and _sickly_
must be given different logical positions in the Victorian use; all refined girls
are sickly, but not all sickly girls are refined.  One might think that there was
a difference of class; a servant-girl called _delicate_ would be merely sickly, but
a young lady so called would also be refined.  The distinction would then be one
of Range.  Certainly an equation can have a Range, just as a special sense of a word
can; this equation apparently was confined to young women, and I have put that idea
into the sentence expounding it.  But I do not think the idea of high class was enough
to call it out; in the course of gossip the matron could say "I hear that Caroline
is very delicate", and this would not suggest that she is "artistic" but that the
tight lacing and the lack of ventilation are giving her incessant headaches. Indeed
the sentence about the walks, as it stands, might quite well have meant only that
the girl was not strong enough, as it would do nowadays; I am merely supposing that
the majesty of the utterance was sufficient to turn the assertion of sickliness into
some kind of moral praise...

Wm. Empson, "Statements in Words" _The Structure of Complex Words_ pp.44-45