Beautiful
adjectivePleasing to the senses or the mind; having qualities of great loveliness.
How to spell beautiful
9 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce beautiful
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does beautiful mean?
- adjectivePleasing to the senses or the mind; having qualities of great loveliness.
Beautiful in a sentence
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The garden looks beautiful in summer.
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She has a beautiful singing voice.
Where does beautiful come from?
Language of origin: French
The word grows out of beauty, which English borrowed in the 1300s from the Old French biauté or beauté, meaning loveliness or fairness. That French noun came from Latin bellus, meaning pretty, fine, or handsome, a word the Romans often used affectionately of women and children. The English suffix -ful, meaning literally full of, was attached to beauty to make beautiful, full of beauty, by the late 1400s. The spelling preserves the older French shape with its run of vowels eau, which is exactly the trap: writers know how the word sounds but not that it keeps the French eau cluster. The same Latin bellus also gives us belle, embellish, and the place name Belleville, all carrying that core idea of fineness.
How the word is built
- beauti- (from beauty, via Old French biauté)
- -ful (full of)
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