The question isn't how I define elegance, it's how they define it, and usually they're after something like "mathematical elegance". They want languages with an extremely small set of built-in features, a minimal set that
can never-the-less be combined to create larger structures that can do all of the usual things.
The trouble is that "Computer Scientists" are all mathematicians, who want to pretend that they're still doing mathematics, even when they're really off doing other things. Settling issues about language design would require delving into social psychology: you need "useability experts" to design experiments that get conducted on groups of volunteers. This could be done by "Computer Scientists" using the infinite supply of undergraduates flowing through the system, but it isn't because it doesn't sound like something Donald Knuth would do.
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