Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Capable of eliciting wonder; astonishing: "The ... whale is one of the most wonderful animals in the world” ( Charles Darwin).
- adj. Admirable; excellent: "The spirit of the movement was wonderful. It was joyous and grave at the same time” ( Christabel Pankhurst).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of a nature or kind to excite wonder or admiration; strange; astonishing; surprising; marvelous.
- Synonyms Wonderful, Strange, Surprising, Curious, Unique, extraordinary, marvelous, amazing, startling, wondrous (poetic). Wonderful generally refers to something above the common, and so marvelous, perhaps almost incredible. Strange refers rather to something beside the common—that is, simply very unusual or odd, and so exciting surprise or wonder. Anything that excites awe or high admiration, or strikes one as sublime, is wonderful; an unpleasant object may be strange, but would not be called wonderful. That which is unexpected is surprising, but it is not necessarily strange; as, a surprising fact; a surprising discovery in science. Curious is wonderful on a small scale; by its derivation it often refers to an object extremely nice and intricate or elaborate in itsdetails, but also it oft en conveys thenotion of pleasing strangeness and even of rarity: as, a curious bit of mosaic; a curious piece of mechanism; a curiously colored stone. Unique expresses that which is sole of its kind or quality: as, a unique book; a unique sort of person. See eccentric and surprise.
- Wonderfully; exceedingly; very.
Wiktionary
- adj. Tending to excite wonder; surprising, extraordinary.
- adj. Surprisingly excellent; very good or admirable, extremely impressive.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Adapted to excite wonder or admiration; surprising; strange; astonishing.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. extraordinarily good or great ; used especially as intensifiers
Etymologies
- From Middle English, from Old English wundorful ("wonderful"), equivalent to wonder + -ful. Cognate Dutch wondervol ("wonderful"), German wundervoll ("wonderful"). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“To have you come over to the factory, and to have somebody say that Mrs. Sheridan is there, and to go to lunch -- Dearest, do you realize how wonderful and how -- well, how _wonderful_ it's going to be?”
“Manti is a wonderful town -- a _wonderful_ town!" he declared.”
“A wonderful hard fix, a _wonderful_ hard fix, _under_ th 'ice, an' I were handy t 'stayin' under un," said Ed, taking evident delight in keeping his auditors in suspense.”
“Whenever I think of God's wonderful, _wonderful_ goodness to me and of my own sinfulness, I want to find a place low at the foot of the cross where I may cover my face in the dust, and yet go on praising Him.”
“In that list are wonderful, * wonderful* films that say so much about the British sensibility, and which have won many awards.”
“And it is going to be wonderful -- just _wonderful_ -- before long.”
The Campfire Girls of Roselawn Or, a Strange Message from the Air
“And much, much more importantly, I have been blessed with wonderful children, and with a wife for whom even the word wonderful is somehow insufficient.”
“During the approximate three-hour running time of the Metropolitan Opera's Shakespeare/Baroque pastiche "The Enchanted Island," the character of Miranda utters the word "wonderful" 16 times.”
“You will love him no matter what, and he can choose his own dreams and that's what we call a wonderful life.”
“Finally on his last evening there, he was taken out for a banquet-style meal and gorged himself on what he described as wonderful food.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘wonderful’.
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macabre
words associated with the macabre & horror.
( open list, randomness )
more:
http://www.wordnik.co...ghastly, grisly, culeus, silly, gruesome, horrid, morbid, angelic, shocking, hideous, ghoulish, frightful and 136 more...
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RELI - words with Biblical connotations
Words in the Bible evoking biblical stories or with special spiritual meaning. Proper names have been reduced to the minimum.
ark, judgement, holy, saint, baptism, spirit, love, eternal, altar, balsam, covenant, flood and 1115 more...
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INTERP - speeches can be...
adequate, adroit, blunt, blurred, committed, divisive, exacerbating, fitting, hollow, lengthy, murky, pronounced and 123 more...
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Overwhelming
Descriptive, emotional, powerful words.
delightful, wonderful, spectacular, great, fantastic, amazing, magnificent, inspiring, intense, brilliant, blatant, hilarious and 2 more...
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Her
beautiful, lovely, magnificent, exquisite, marvelous, charming, delicate, delightful, elegant, divine, resplendant, radiant and 6 more...
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Kangaroo Words 2
Kangaroo words with joey-antonyms, e.g., pest/pet
pest, friend, giant, cremate, covert, there, feast, wonderful, animosity, inattentive, electrocuted, rectitude and 54 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:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
National Library Agenda Summit
nla2006, summit, agenda, library, ala, diversity, education, learning, continuous, scan, environmental, plan and 646 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
grabbable, retuiteando, leaving, fantastic, absolutely, kurwa, hella, ridic, underpass, hate, interlude, plush and 2369 more... -
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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feeling words
twitterpated, loquacious, ambiguous, pensive, sluggish, anxious, adventurous, curious, abandoned, absent-minded, abrasive, abused and 653 more...
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Words I Frequently Find Myself Wantin...
I may or may not use them, because I realize that it can become repetitious.
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Samme's Words
soliloquy, meander, creativity, magic, discovery, happiness, empowerment, abundance, [magnificent], iridescent, artistic, magical and 694 more...
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kingrat47's Words
procrustean, devolution, cacophony, hippopotamus, crunch, beware, chortled, sibilant, subtle, undermine, acromegaly, acropolis and 645 more...
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_mark's list
Words I like!
( personal list, favorite words, randomness )psy, nanobot, success, smack, vibration, microcosmic, springgraph, marksmanship, estranged, homoerotic, flex, fiasco and 1696 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for wonderful.
sionnach joantonym = woeful
Apr 25, 2008
sonofgroucho As in "It's a Wonderful Life". Oct 14, 2007