beautiful

From Middle English bewteful, beautefull (“attractive to the eye, beautiful”), equivalent to beauty +‎ -ful. Displaced earlier sheen (from Middle English schene (“beautiful”), from Old English scīene (“beautiful”)), Middle English wliti (“beautiful”), from Old English wlitiġ (“beautiful”).

• enPR: byo͞oʹtĭ-fəl, IPA^(key): /ˈbjuːtɪfəl/

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• Hyphenation: beau‧ti‧ful

beautiful (comparative more beautiful, superlative most beautiful)

1. Attractive and possessing beauty.
   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 5, in The China Governess‎:

     It's rather like a beautiful Inverness cloak one has inherited. Much too good to hide away, so one wears it instead of an overcoat and pretends it's an amusing new fashion.

   • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

     It is a beautiful kitchen! — It is beautiful.

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   Anyone who has ever met her thought she was absolutely beautiful.

   There's a beautiful lake by the town.

2. (of the weather) Pleasant; clear.

   It's beautiful outside, let's go for a walk.

3. Well executed.

   The skater performed a beautiful axel.

• The term carries a distinctly feminine aspect and is mostly not applied to men (in which case handsome is more appropriate and de rigueur).
• The comparatives beautifuler and beautifuller, and the superlatives beautifulest and beautifullest have also occasionally been used, but are nonstandard.

• (possessing charm and attractive): beauteous, attractive, cute, fair, good-looking, gorgeous, sheen, handsome, hot (slang), lovely, nice-looking, pretty, shapely, fit (slang)
• (of the weather): clear, fine, nice, pleasant, sunny
• (well executed): excellent, exceptional, good, great, marvellous/marvelous, perfect, stylish, wonderful
• (ironic: how unfortunate): great, marvellous/marvelous, nice, very nice, wonderful (any of these can be prefixed with an intensifier such as bloody, damned or just)
• See also Thesaurus:beautiful

• (possessing charm and attractive): grotesque, hideous, homely, plain, misshapen, repulsive, ugly; unbeautiful
• (of the weather): bad, cloudy, dull, miserable, overcast, rainy, wet
• (well executed): average, bad, mediocre, poor, shoddy, substandard, terrible, weak

• beauty
  • See also Thesaurus:beautiful woman