More about pulchritudinous
- Pulchritudinous comes from the Latin word pulchritūdō, meaning “beauty.”
- Pulchritūdō also gives us pulchritude, meaning “physical beauty,” which was first recorded in the 1400s.
- Pulchritudinous began to appear in the early 1700s and gained popularity in the 1800s with American authors who started using the word because it was humorously long and overly complicated.
- Washington Irving employed it in The Crayon Miscellany (1835) alongside other unnecessarily complex words to make fun of an advertisement for ginger ale.
EXAMPLES OF PULCHRITUDINOUS
- The sunset painted the sky with pulchritudinous hues of pink and gold.
- The ballerina’s graceful movements were enhanced by her pulchritudinous form.