1. Having qualities that delight the senses, especially the sense of sight.
2. Excellent; wonderful.

SYNONYMS   beautiful, lovely, pretty, handsome, comely, fair. All these adjectives apply to what excites aesthetic admiration. Beautiful is most comprehensive: a beautiful child; a beautiful painting; a beautiful mathematical proof. Lovely applies to what inspires emotion rather than intellectual appreciation: "They were lovely, your eyes" (George Seferis). What is pretty is beautiful in a delicate or graceful way: a pretty face; a pretty song; a pretty room. Handsome stresses poise and dignity of form and proportion: a very large, handsome paneled library. "She is very pretty, but not so extraordinarily handsome" (William Makepeace Thackeray). Comely suggests wholesome physical attractiveness: "Mrs. Hurd is a large woman with a big, comely, simple face" (Ernest Hemingway). Fair emphasizes freshness or purity: "In the highlands, in the country places,/Where the old plain men have rosy faces,/And the young fair maidens/Quiet eyes" (Robert Louis Stevenson).

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.