Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Great physical beauty and appeal.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Beauty; comeliness; handsomeness.
Wiktionary
- n. Physical beauty.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. That quality of appearance which pleases the eye; beauty; comeliness; grace; loveliness.
- n. Attractive moral excellence; moral beauty.
WordNet 3.0
- n. physical beauty (especially of a woman)
Etymologies
- Middle English pulcritude, from Latin pulchritūdō, from pulcher ("beautiful"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English pulcritude, from Latin pulchritūdō, from pulcher, pulchr-, beautiful. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If we don't allow people to hug our Republicans without a legitimate reason, it's for reasons of sustainability, not necessarily a lack of pulchritude.”
Fictionaut: Entering Massachusetts: Please Don't Hug the Republicans
“In addition to being known as a connoisseur of pulchritude, Hughes had a reputation as an inventor, and was said to have designed a special bra to make even more of Ms. Russell's appearance.”
The Washington Post: Jane Russell, film siren who sizzled on-screen in 'The Outlaw,' dies at 89
“Bride's family has a rich friend in Cannes that delights in taking us to one of those places on the Cannes beach where you lounge away trying to avoid noticing the pulchritude from behind your Foster Grants and in fear of slightly moving your hand because it results in a waiter suddenly appearing with an adult beverage just like the last one you ordered.”
“Add to that the friendliness (and pulchritude) of Brasileiras, especially towards American men (sorry ladies -- but hey, I hear China has a serious boy surplus), and you've got yourself an excellent case for falar português.”
The Huffington Post: Dr. Ali Binazir: The Best Languages to Learn in College
“Add to that the friendliness (and pulchritude) of Brasileiras, especially towards American men (sorry ladies -- but hey, I hear China has a serious boy surplus), and you've got yourself an excellent case for falar português.”
The Huffington Post: Dr. Ali Binazir: The Best Languages to Learn in College
“A glance through the 1971 album shows a variety of other pulchritude-reduction methods in operation.”
The Guardian: The day video almost killed the Subbuteo star | Harry Pearson
“What splendor and pulchritude, what symmetry in all things, what assets for the necessities of life have you not granted and assigned to this land and its inhabitants!”
“Every day for 40 years, more than half-a-million viewers could look up and bask in these colossal testaments to American plenty and pulchritude.”
“From his creation of the Follies that bore his name and reflected his twin passions for female pulchritude and spectacular stagecraft to his swan song as producer of the first great modern musical, Show Boat, Ziegfeld transformed burlesque into a new kind of American musical theater.”
“Ah yes, Bildo is such a fine piece of masculine pulchritude.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pulchritude’.
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 330 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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New words
new words or spelling issues
voluble, Metagrobolize, salubrious, calumny, fugacity, withdrawal, bourse, hypertrophy, leitmotif, argot, improvident, damask and 238 more...
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pabouche, pabulous, pabulum, pacable, pace, pachydermia, pachyglossal, pachymeter, pachynsis, paciferous, pacificate, pactolian and 1766 more...
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words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Used
halcyon, ineluctable, inspissated, incarnadine, askance, demur, saltation, requisite, effusive, specious, liminality, indomitable and 114 more...
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Ballardian
All things descriptive from JG
Ballardoperation mindfuck, pataphysics, wahrheitssensible..., polymorphism, postprandial, covalent, stygian, lucus a non lucendo, kafkaesque, leitmotif, fugacious, ablate and 77 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
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motley assortment
a motley crew of words i enjoy
sense datum sensa..., sense datum, sens..., sense datum, sensate, potete, golpe, herrero, sapidity, synaesthesia, cicisbeo, dandiprat, faineant and 19 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1856 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
Words
teeter, headlong, reprobate, canard, ersatz, prevaricate, trenchant, minatory, fatuous, stultify, vitiate, fulminate and 135 more...
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word tank
a couple words
logolepsy, nefarious, quintessential, tintinnabulation, serendipity, rhapsody, palimpsest, panoply, mellifluous, imbue, loquacious, garrulous and 174 more...
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Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pulchritude.
myth17 Save the world from evil GREs. Aug 6, 2012
kanpeki dayo i dunno. i like this one. Sep 8, 2011
blafferty caconym Jun 3, 2011
jeffreydavidscott This seems like an unattractive word, in contrast to what it means. I first heard this word in the lyrics to "Popsicle Toes" from Michael Franks' 1975 album, The Art of Tea. The rhymed it thusly:
Jan 12, 2011
Telofy Then just look for "by skipvia". Aug 18, 2009
bilby Yeah, thanks sob. If you do a page search on a username it also finds them in the comments ... and some of us diehards can have plenty of comments on a given page *sigh* I'm just having a whinge. Aug 18, 2009
sobriquet Ctrl-F skipvia; or Sounds One Way, Means Another
Aug 18, 2009
bilby When a word appears on this many lists, the current Wordie format is close to unworkable. I've scrolled up and down the list to the right three times and still haven't spotted which of skip's lists this word appears in. Aug 18, 2009
sobriquet This showed up on a GRE question today, and as skipvia's list augured, I got it dead wrong. Ah well. Aug 18, 2009
hankreddick Didn't W.C. Fields use this word (to describe Mae West?) in one of his movies? Jul 18, 2009
sionnach Philip Wells waxes articulate about his dislike of this word (The Guardian, July 7, 2009)
"it violates all the magical impulses of balanced onomatopoeic language - it of course means "beautiful", but its meaning is nothing of the sort, being stuffed to the brim with a brutally latinate cudgel of barbaric consonants. If consonants represent riverbanks and vowels the river's flow, this is the word equivalent of the bottomless abyss of dry bones, where demons gather to spit acid." Jul 7, 2009
rolig Pulcher? I hardly know'er! Apr 16, 2009
tbtabby I can hardly wait for Problem Sleuth to unleash his mighty Pulchritude attack. Nov 23, 2008
asativum Somehow I missed this. Antiaurosemantonym is luverly! Apr 22, 2008
logophile Asativum: how about antiaurosemantonym? Feb 8, 2008
skipvia I once started a list on that very topic, Asativum. I'll see if I can revive it a bit with this word. Nov 20, 2007
reesetee I like it, too. It does come in handy on occasion, as you so vividly point out, c_b. :-) Nov 20, 2007
chained_bear I use this word a lot. Nobody seems to know that it means I'm leering at that jogger passing my car at the red light... Nov 20, 2007
asativum I have to agree with snowswim. It's a candidate for the word that sounds least like its meaning. (Is there a word for that?) Nov 20, 2007
wuwu4u Pulchritude. From the Latin, pulcher, beautiful. That was the word that first struck Joyce when Millat Iqbal stepped forward onto the steps of her conservatory...
Pulchritude-- beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection. Beauty in a tall brown young man who should have been indistinguishable to Joyce from those she regularly bought milk and bread from, gave her accounts to for inspection, or passed her checkbook to behind the thick glass of a bank till. Sep 15, 2007
snowsim Such an ugly word for beauty. Dec 6, 2006