pretty
/ˈprɪti
/- The Arabic language is beautiful, girls are pretty, men are men - and the land is the land.
- If he hadn't known her there was no cheating, just him being a man attracted to a pretty woman.
- She was disgustingly pretty, with beautiful sapphire eyes and smooth complexion.
Synonyms
- The lead singer wearing a pretty dress and summer sandals added to the airiness of their set.
- Or get right up to the minute with a lilac summer style with pretty paper flowers on the front for £34.99.
- Is It Up to Me, a really pretty song, was taped live during a rehearsal at the Pyramid on one of those four track cassette jobs.
- Played in horrible conditions with gusting gales and sweeping rain this was never going to be a pretty affair.
- The game began and for thirty minutes it wasn't a pretty affair by any stretch of the imagination.
- A derby match is seldom a pretty affair, with so much at stake games become scrappy.
- Their match at Bad Blood was pretty decent and I enjoyed it to a certain degree.
- It was a pretty bad injury, and it was pouring blood onto the already stained carpet.
- Funny, she thought, his injuries looked pretty bad just ten minutes ago.
Synonyms
- At first it looks kelpy, but underneath the rocks are split by narrow gullies and boulder caves, with lots of pretties to see.
- I also saw necklaces, many pretties and some uglies too!
- As promised, three trunks, several hatboxes, and a few normal-sized suitcases had been carefully placed in the center, Amy already working at the task of freeing those pretties and lovelies that rested within.
- This role will give Leo's career a shot in the arm, I feel, rather than sink him to a level of ordinary boy-toy pretties of the Tab, Rock, Troy milieu which Mr. Bailey eschews.
- In today's pop culture the pretties fight back.
- Charles, deciding that we had perhaps had enough surveying for one day, suggested we head to the back to look at the pretties, check out some leads and get back early for once.
- Kingston's town centre rangers were busy prettying the borough last week by planting some 250 mature geraniums.
- If the boss was coming on a store visit, they were busy prettying the place up.
- These rapidly built, but artistically maligned buildings are now prettied up with decorative flourishes and used for museums and churches.
Synonyms
Phrases
be more than (or not) just a pretty face
pretty much (or nearly or well)
a pretty penny
pretty please
be sitting pretty
Derivatives
prettily
/ adverb ...- Well-known film actresses often posed prettily in elegant cheongsams against the backdrop of idealized gardens or home settings.
- As for the ham - you can serve it rolled up prettily on top.
- Many of its spurs are prettily sunlit, and what they build up to is inspiring, apocalyptic, a burst of slanting sunbeams from a blue cloud-window.
prettiness
/ noun ...- Because tropical beaches have such inherent prettiness, finding attractive compositions isn't hard.
- At low tide, large areas dry into plains of black mud before the tide restores the creeks to their picture-postcard prettiness.
- She was probably even more beautiful than her cousin, not the bright prettiness like her cousin, but this deep alluring beauty.
prettyish
- A prettyish girl, somewhere on the plump-curvy continuum, she dyed her hair a too-brash blonde, and years of peroxide abuse had reduced it to a frizzy, frazzled mess.
- A very thin, prettyish girl in black trousers and a top took me to a conference room.
Origin
Old English prættig; related to Middle Dutch pertich 'brisk, clever', obsolete Dutch prettig 'humorous, sporty', from a West Germanic base meaning 'trick'. The sense development 'deceitful, cunning, clever, skilful, admirable, pleasing, nice' has parallels in adjectives such as canny, fine, nice, etc..
In his diary entry for 11 May 1660, Samuel Pepys mentions ‘Dr Clerke, who I found to be a very pretty man and very knowing’. Pepys meant that the doctor was admirable, ‘a fine fellow’. This is merely one of the many senses that pretty, a word that comes from a root meaning ‘trick’, has had over the centuries. The first was ‘cunning, crafty’, which was followed by ‘clever, skilful’, ‘brave’, and ‘admirable, pleasing’ before the main modern sense, ‘attractive’ appeared in the 15th century, each step in itself easily followed, even if the modern sense has come a long way from the original. Around that time the meaning ‘considerable, great’ also developed, which is now only found in a pretty penny. Pretty has been used as an adverb in the sense ‘fairly, moderately’, since the mid 16th century. Sitting pretty, ‘comfortably placed or well situated’, is originally American, and is first recorded in 1915.