attractive or aesthetically pleasing, esp in delicate or graceful ways, but less than beautiful
outwardly pleasant but lacking strength, purpose, or intensity
pretty words that make no sense — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
used ironically: dreadful or terrible
a pretty mess you've got us into
moderately large or considerable
a very pretty profit
a pretty penny
informal a considerable amount of money
prettily adv
prettiness noun
prettyish adj
Middle English praty, prety artful, dainty, from Old English prættig tricky, from prætt trick. The Old English forerunner of pretty was a derogatory word meaning ‘crafty’. But, reversing the semantic trend shown by cunning, artful, and crafty, by the 15th cent. it meant ‘clever’ or ‘ingenious’ in a usually approbatory sense, and thus became a generalized term of approval. Its use as an adverb meaning ‘rather’ dates from the 16th cent., and has become so well established and seemingly independent of the adjectival sense that few people would hesitate to say pretty awful or even pretty ugly