Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Pleasantness; agreeableness.
- noun The state or quality of being pretty, or pleasing to the esthetic sense; especially, the effect of beauty in its slighter, more delicate, and more evanescent forms; the charm of grace, harmony, delicacy, or neatness, as presented to the sight or the hearing; diminutive or dainty beauty: as, the prettiness of a picture or a tune; the prettiness of a gesture, a dimple, or a lisp.
- noun Neatness and taste bestowed on small objects; hence, often, petty elegance; affected niceness; finicalness; foppishness.
- noun That which is pretty; a pretty thing or person: generally in a depreciative sense, as suggesting pettiness.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The quality or state of being pretty; -- used sometimes in a disparaging sense.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The quality of being
pretty .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being appealing in a delicate or graceful way (of a girl or young woman)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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And when desirability as a friend or wife is also bound up in prettiness, it reinforces that message.
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But to be fair to Rubenking, the editor who authored the review, there's much more to his GUI complaints than degree of "prettiness" - and one of them even involved his discovery of the Avira-acknowledged "bug" during PC Mag's tests.
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This speech, Bob., thou wilt call a prettiness; but the allegory is just; and thou hast not quite cured me of the metaphorical.
Clarissa Harlowe 2006
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They descend into simple prettiness, which is simple insipidity.
Lessons in Life A Series of Familiar Essays Timothy Titcomb
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Her prettiness was the kind that wins at once and keeps you ever after.
Letters of a Woman Homesteader Elinore Pruitt Stewart
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He recalled the prettiness of Barbee's new girl at the lunch counter; he remembered Sanchia's regular features; these two were simply not of the same order of beings as
The Desert Valley Jackson Gregory 1912
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Malluch was touched by a doubt; he recalled the prettiness of the favour shown him by the woman at the fountain, and wondered if he who had the sorrows of a mother in mind was about to forget them for a lure of love; yet he replied, "The Orchard of Palms lies beyond the village two hours by horse, and one by a swift camel."
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I followed him into the kitchen, where his little brown-skinned wife was preparing breakfast, and I fancied, after seeing her, that her prettiness was the cause of his inhospitable manner towards a stranger.
The Purple Land 1881
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She was a meagre, hollow-eyed, bloodless girl of seventeen, yet her features had a certain charm -- that dolorous kind of prettiness which is often enough seen in the London needle-slave.
The Nether World George Gissing 1880
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Yet the little sitting-room had an aspect of simple rustic prettiness, which is almost pleasanter to look at than fine furniture.
Henry Dunbar A Novel 1875
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