Luxurious

How to spell luxurious

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce luxurious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does luxurious mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely comfortable, elegant, and expensive in a way that gives great pleasure.

Luxurious in a sentence

• The hotel suite was luxurious, with marble floors and a private balcony.

• After months of saving, they booked a luxurious cruise around the Mediterranean.

Where does luxurious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin luxuriosus, an adjective meaning 'excessive', 'rank', or 'self-indulgent', which was built on the noun luxuria, meaning 'excess', 'extravagance', or even 'rampant overgrowth'. That noun in turn came from luxus, meaning 'excess' or 'indulgence', a sense closely tied to splendour and soft living. English borrowed the word through Old French luxurios during the 1300s, and at first it carried a disapproving edge, suggesting lechery or wasteful overindulgence rather than simple comfort. Over the centuries the negative tone softened, so that today luxurious chiefly means richly comfortable and expensive. The same luxus root sits inside the modern word 'luxury', and the unstressed 'u' in the middle (lux-U-rious) is the spot writers most often stumble over.

How the word is built

• luxuri- (from Latin luxuria: excess, abundance)
• -ous (adjective suffix meaning 'full of')