Prettier
adjectiveMore pleasing or attractive in a delicate or charming way than something else.
How to spell prettier
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce prettier
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does prettier mean?
- adjectiveMore pleasing or attractive in a delicate or charming way than something else.
Prettier in a sentence
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The garden looks prettier now that the roses have bloomed.
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She thought the blue dress was prettier than the green one.
Where does prettier come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is the comparative form of the adjective 'pretty', which comes from the Old English word 'prættig', meaning 'cunning', 'crafty', or 'clever'. The earliest sense had nothing to do with beauty; it described someone sly and full of tricks, rooted in 'prætt', a noun meaning a trick or a wile. Over the centuries the meaning softened from 'clever' to 'fine' or 'admirable', and by the 1400s it had settled into the modern idea of attractive in a delicate or charming way. The comparative is built by following the usual English rule for adjectives ending in a consonant plus 'y': the 'y' becomes 'i' before the suffix '-er', which is precisely the spelling trap, since the result no longer looks like 'pretty'. The same shift turns 'happy' into 'happier' and 'busy' into 'busier'.
How the word is built
- pretty (stem with y changed to i)
- -er (comparative suffix)
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