Beauties

How to spell beauties

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce beauties

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does beauties mean?

1. nounMore than one beautiful person, thing, or pleasing quality.

Beauties in a sentence

• The gallery displayed several rare beauties from the private collection.

• The rose garden was full of prize-winning beauties in early summer.

Where does beauties come from?

Language of origin: French

The word descends from the Latin bellus, meaning 'pretty', 'fine', or 'handsome', which in turn relates to bonus, 'good'. From bellus, Old French developed the noun beaute (later beaute), describing the quality of being pleasing to look at, and English borrowed this during the 1300s, originally spelling it in many ways before settling on the French-flavoured 'beauty'. The plural 'beauties' follows the regular English rule of changing a final consonant-plus-y into 'ies', which is exactly where the spelling trap lies. The same bellus root survives in the word 'embellish', meaning to make beautiful, and in the place name connected to 'belle'. Over time the noun broadened from abstract loveliness to also name individual beautiful people or things, giving us the countable plural we use today.

How the word is built

• beaut- (from Old French beaute: physical loveliness)
• -y (noun suffix)
• -es (plural, with y changed to i)