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  1. lovely love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Full of love; loving.
  2. adj. Inspiring love or affection.
  3. adj. Having beauty that appeals to the emotions as well as to the eye. See Synonyms at beautiful.
  4. adj. Enjoyable; delightful.
  5. n. A beautiful person, especially a woman.
  6. n. A lovely object.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Fitted to excite love or emotion; possessing or characterized by engaging qualities; lovable; attractive; charming: as, a lovely woman; a lovely view; a lovely dress.
  2. Attractive to appetite or desire; enticing; inviting.
  3. Loving; tender.
  4. Synonyms Amiable, Lovely (see quotation from Archbishop Trench under amiable); Handsome, Pretty, etc. (see beautiful); pleasing, charming, fair.
  5. So as to induce or excite love; very beautifully or pleasantly.
  6. Lovingly; kindly.
  7. Worthy to be praised.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Worthy to be praised.
  2. adj. obsolete Inspiring actual love
  3. adj. Evoking love-like, happy emotions by aesthetic or similar endearing qualities.
  4. adj. Very nice, wonderful in a general sense.
  5. adj. obsolete Loving, filled with love
  6. n. An attractive, lovely person, especially a (professional) beauty.
  7. n. A lovely object

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Having such an appearance as excites, or is fitted to excite, love; beautiful; charming; very pleasing in form, looks, tone, or manner.
  2. adj. Lovable; amiable; having qualities of any kind which excite, or are fitted to excite, love or friendship.
  3. adj. obsolete Loving; tender.
  4. adj. Very pleasing; -- applied loosely to almost anything which is not grand or merely pretty
  5. adv. Obs. or R. In a manner to please, or to excite love.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. lovable especially in a childlike or naive way
  2. n. a very pretty girl who works as a photographer's model
  3. adj. appealing to the emotions as well as the eye

Etymologies

  1. From Middle English lovely, luvelich, lufli, from Old English luflīc ("amiable, loving, lovable"), equivalent to love +‎ -ly. (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “To hear that lovely voice, for I do her justice, and there are lovely notes in her voice, _lovely_, to hear that voice shrieking and screaming away, in what she called the great scene, was simply pitiful.”

    Queen Lucia

  • “How lovely -- how _lovely_ you are!" he exclaimed, almost under his breath.”

    Robin

  • “Ah! mammy," she exclaimed more than once, "what a lovely, _lovely_ home! how happy we might be here!”

    Holidays at Roselands

  • “Betty finally hit the jackpot with a lovely (or should I say $lovely$) man and she fucking blew it away!”

    Bryanboy.com

  • “Oh, what a lovely, _lovely_ house!" cried Sprite, "and what a dear place to live in.”

    Princess Polly's Gay Winter

  • “And your mouth -- so sweet and sad -- but, what a lovely, _lovely_ smile! ”

    Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, Volume I

  • “We're always tempted to use the phrase "lovely in lavender," and Mila Kunis might have been just that at Sunday night's Oscars.”

    The Huffington Post: Mila Kunis At The 2011 Oscars: Hit Or Miss? (PHOTOS, POLL)

  • “They used the word lovely to describe everything from fried rice to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.”

    Simon & Schuster: Heaven Lake

  • “He said he was attending a football game between his university and Ohio University, and he mistakenly followed what he called a lovely group of women into an all-female dormitory.”

    CNN Transcript Oct 15, 2008

  • “That's what I call a lovely dessert, tailor made for Valentine day!”

    As pure as your love...

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synonyms (11)

Words with the same meaning

  1. charming
  2. lovable
  1. delightful
  2. amiable
  1. beautiful
  2. enchanting
  1. delectable
  2. loving
  1. tender
  2. agreeable
  1. lovesome

equivalents (3)

Other words for ‘lovely’

  1. lovable
  1. loveable
  1. beautiful

hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. photographer's model

same context (5)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. beautiful
  1. sweet
  1. pretty
  1. gorgeous
  1. long

reverse dictionary (26)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. beautiful
  2. lovely
  3. luvly
  4. loveliness
  5. fir
  1. lovesome
  2. sweetkin
  3. ravishing
  4. Lyta's
  5. lovelily
  1. Chandler
  2. amiable
  3. blossom
  4. delicate
  5. lovelihead
  1. Waller
  2. bound form
  3. beckon
  4. while
  5. take
  1. nymph
  2. psyche
  3. unlovely
  4. charming
  5. -ly
  1. sweet

tags (5)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. love
  1. often misspelled
  1. feminine
  1. ooh
  1. cvcvcv

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tagging (3)

Words tagged ‘lovely’

  1. Straithant
  1. beautiful
  1. fæger

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Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘lovely’.

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Comments

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  • Ed_Jogg Nailed it! frindley:) Feb 10, 2011

  • mayline974 i like it^^ Aug 6, 2009

  • frindley "Love-ly,
    All I am is lovely.
    Lovely is the one thing I can do.

    Winsome,
    What I am is winsome,
    Radiant as in some
    Dream come true.

    Oh, isn't it a shame?
    I can neither sew
    Nor cook
    Nor read or write my name.
    But I'm happy
    Merely being lovely,
    For it's one thing I can give to you."

    lyric from Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Apr 19, 2008

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‘lovely’ has been looked up 5543 times, loved by 15 people, added to 98 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.