Glamorous
adjectiveHaving an attractive, exciting, and stylish quality that draws admiration.
How to spell glamorous
9 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce glamorous
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does glamorous mean?
- adjectiveHaving an attractive, exciting, and stylish quality that draws admiration.
Glamorous in a sentence
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The actress wore a glamorous gown to the awards ceremony.
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Travel brochures make the resort look more glamorous than it really is.
Where does glamorous come from?
Language of origin: Other
This word grows out of 'glamour', which began as a Scottish alteration of the word 'grammar'. In medieval usage 'grammar' carried the sense not just of learning but of occult learning, and the related form 'gramarye' meant magic or enchantment. Scots speakers reshaped this into 'glamour', meaning a magic spell that could deceive the eye, and the writer Sir Walter Scott helped carry it into wider English in the early 1800s. From that bewitching sense the meaning softened into 'alluring charm', and the adjective 'glamorous' was formed by adding the suffix '-ous', meaning 'full of'. The spelling trap lives in that step: the noun keeps its '-our' in British use, but the adjective drops the second 'u' to give 'glamorous', not 'glamourous'.
How the word is built
- glamour (enchantment, alluring beauty)
- -ous (full of); note the second 'u' of glamour is dropped before the suffix
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