pulchritudinous
/puhl-kri-tood-n-uh s/
adjective
1. Beautiful
synonyms: comely, alluring, beauteous, enticing, lovely, etc.
The funny thing about words is sometimes they sound ugly but they mean beauty. I mean, this word sounds like disgust, right? Like something my Auntie Lela (who is neither my aunt nor my mother's sister, but rather a 6 foot 2 black woman who loves me like her own and would gladly sever her own limbs to take my mother's pain away) would say about the nasty bits that get caught in the drain after doing dishes. "Chile, clean that drain out! I'm tryin' to wash my hands and there's nothin but a pulchritudinous stink cloggin' up my pipes. Pulchritudinous!"
One cannot escape it's odd similarities to other well-known ugly words...repulsive, crude, lewd, puss...even it's first synonym is "comely" (which sounds a lot like homely). But pulchritudinous is, in fact, a compliment. How odd.
In fact, my Auntie Lela (who swears I got my ghetto lips from her) has often told me how pulchritudinous I am. In the right way. Now, I'm sure she would never pick this one adjective to describe something's beauty...Like when she has her Whitney weave in and she wears that short skirt that shows off her Tina Turner legs...she looks mighty pulchritudinous, indeed. But she'd probably just say "Don't I look good?"
Would she even know if I told her she was pulchritudinous that it meant she looked beauteous? enticing? lovely? Maybe we should bring pulchritudinous back...
Fellas, won't you consider a new way to tell your girl she's fine?
"Yo shorty! You sure is pulchritudinous. Downright comely. Can I hit you up?"
Ok...maybe not. Or maybe yes...
