This Week’s Fun & Fancy Word: Pulchritudinous
This Week’s Fun & Fancy Word Is:
Although pulchritude sounds like something you’d scrape off your shoe, pulchritudinous actually means beautiful. Not just attractive, good-looking or “hot,” but overwhelmingly beautiful, to the point of leaving onlookers awestruck.
Etymology:
Origin of Pulchritudinous
Pulchritude + ous, an English element which transforms nouns into adjectives. Pulchritude, meaning “beautiful, fine or graceful in any way,” is derived from the Latin pulchritudo “beauty; excellence, attractiveness.”
When originally introduced to English in the 1400s, pulchritudinous primarily appeared in philosophy, formal poetry, and aesthetic discourse.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the word pulchritudinous became a marker of educated speech, particularly in literary and aristocratic circles. It was frequently used in beauty critiques and romantic literature, to convey not mere attractiveness, but a near transcendent quality of physical beauty and grace. [1]
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