Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Scots Physically attractive or appealing; pretty.
- adj. Scots Excellent.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Beautiful; fair or pleasant to look upon; pretty; fine.
- Gay; merry; frolicsome; cheerful; blithe.
- n. In mining, a mass of ore adjacent to a vein, but not distinctly connected with it; “a great collection of ore, without any vein coming into or going from it,” See carbona.
Wiktionary
- adj. Geordie alternative spelling of bonnie.
- n. mining A round and compact bed of ore, or a distinct bed, not communicating with a vein.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Handsome; beautiful; pretty; attractively lively and graceful.
- adj. Gay; merry; frolicsome; cheerful; blithe.
- n. (Mining) A round and compact bed of ore, or a distinct bed, not communicating with a vein.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. very pleasing to the eye
Etymologies
- Middle English boni, probably from Old French bon, feminine bonne ("good"), from Latin bonus ("good"). See bounty, and compare bonus, boon. (Wiktionary)
- Probably ultimately from French bon, good, from Latin bonus; see deu-2 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If she's clever compared with the rest of them then I pity our cousins in bonny Scotland.”
“See here is our ain bonny Charlie for a guard, and what better could an auld Jacobite wish for? said Kenneth, looking fondly on his wife; while their son marched past them in his Highland dress and wooden claymore by his side.”
Sketches and Tales Illustrative of Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick, North America
“He wad mak a bonny corpse; I wad like to hae the streiking and winding”
“She used to be -- bonny, that is, as a button or a buckle micht be bonny.”
“That's the equivalent of my parents describing a girl as "bonny" when they meant she'd be better looking if she'd been hit in the face with a shovel.”
“Eh, but ye wad mak a bonny munsie o 'me, Grannie, to hae me feart at the deil an' a '!”
“He wad mak a bonny corpse; I wad like to hae the streiking and winding o 'him. ”
“I am acquainted) -- equally joyous would Mr. Evans have been to have had the inspection of some of these 'bonny' songs.”
“An accurate, daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face: a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers: but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck.”
The Huffington Post: Nava Atlas: Based Upon the Book: An Interview with Charlotte Brontë
“You can bid for the Roboraptor at the Philcon TAFF auction, where it will be auctioned off to send a deserving sci-fi fan to bonny old England!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bonny’.
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Imprecise Units of Measurement
A list of terms for units of measurement that are less than exact, such as dessert-spoonful.
two shakes, dessert-spoonful, a pinch, a bit, some, smidge, smidgin, dollop, drop, fleck, smack, sprinkling and 187 more...
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Beautiful and Ugly
Beautiful, attractive, well-formed
Ugly, unattractive, malformedadorable, alluring, angelic, appealing, appetizing, attractive, beaming, beauteous, beautiful, becoming, beguiling, bewitching and 180 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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You are so GOOD LOOKING!
Words about looking good
a dish, dishy, snazzy, styling, looker, handsome, beautiful, delicious, dessert, yummy, tantalizing, hormone hunk and 55 more...
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GRE
GRE words from Princeton Review guide, ETS GRE Book from 2010 (for revised test), New Yorker/NY Times articles.
sycophant, obsequious, volubility, equanimity, enervate, effrontery, impertinent, platitude, impudence, quiescent, propitiate, equivocate and 124 more...
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Warp, Woof, Wimble
My favorite words.
prurient, locution, mondegreen, vaunted, lugubrious, larine, warp, woof, wimble, ineffable, pyknic, sodden and 114 more...
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B is for Blue Canary
My B Words
bugbear, bette davis eyes, backstroke, barney, babushka, babycakes, backscratcher, bad news bears, balderdash, ballyhoo, baloney, bamboozle and 150 more...
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Words
scabbard, insouciant, bonny, ominous, desiderate, concurrent, credulity, clandestine, palpable, schadenfreude, ubiquitous, ajudge and 3 more...
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Beauty
Words that describe beauty.
pulchritude, winsome, comely, fair, exquisite, lovely, gorgeous, drop-dead, fetching, ambrosial, dishy, bonny and 9 more...
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words to love
hefty, commiserate, analgesic, litigious, moribund, decanter, sonorous, simulacrum, espadrille, beauteous, decipher, apotheosis and 18 more...
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Adjectives of Aesthetics
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bonny.
hernesheir A small quantity of anything. --Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary and Supplement, 1841. May 9, 2011
seanahan I thought this was Irish, but it's actually Scottish, which I guess is pretty close. "Bonnie lass" is fairly common phrase in Celtic music. Oct 31, 2007
jeffazi very pleasing to the eye (also "bonnie"). Oct 30, 2007