PRETTINESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does prettiness mean? 

• PRETTINESS (noun)
  The noun PRETTINESS has 1 sense:

1. the quality of being appealing in a delicate or graceful way (of a girl or young woman)

  Familiarity information: PRETTINESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRETTINESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being appealing in a delicate or graceful way (of a girl or young woman)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

cuteness; prettiness

Hypernyms ("prettiness" is a kind of...):

beauty (the qualities that give pleasure to the senses)

Derivation:

pretty (pleasing by delicacy or grace; not imposing)

 Context examples 

They were too handsome themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Uppercross was a moderate-sized village, which a few years back had been completely in the old English style, containing only two houses superior in appearance to those of the yeomen and labourers; the mansion of the squire, with its high walls, great gates, and old trees, substantial and unmodernized, and the compact, tight parsonage, enclosed in its own neat garden, with a vine and a pear-tree trained round its casements; but upon the marriage of the young 'squire, it had received the improvement of a farm-house elevated into a cottage, for his residence, and Uppercross Cottage, with its veranda, French windows, and other prettiness, was quite as likely to catch the traveller's eye as the more consistent and considerable aspect and premises of the Great House, about a quarter of a mile farther on.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

He had time to note the light, fluffy something that hid her queenly head, the tasteful lines of her wrapped figure, the gracefulness of her carriage and of the hand that caught up her skirts; and then she was gone and he was left staring at the two girls of the cannery, at their tawdry attempts at prettiness of dress, their tragic efforts to be clean and trim, the cheap cloth, the cheap ribbons, and the cheap rings on the fingers.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)