pretty

1. 1.

   pleasing by delicacy or grace; not imposing

   “pretty girl”

   “pretty song”

   “pretty room”

   Similarbeautiful
2. 2.

   (used ironically) unexpectedly bad

   “a pretty mess”

   “a pretty kettle of fish”

   Similarbad

   irony

1. 1.

   to certain extent or degree

   “pretty big”

   “pretty bad”

   “jolly decent of him”

   “the shoes are priced reasonably”

   “he is fairly clever with computers”

   Synonymsreasonablymoderatelyjollysomewhatfairlymiddlingpassably

Other forms of pretty

comparative or superlative

prettier

comparative or superlative

prettiest

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about pretty

What does pretty mean?

pretty means "pleasing by delicacy or grace; not imposing". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in pretty?

pretty has 2 syllables: pret-ty. The stress falls on "pret". In IPA it is /ˈpɹɪti/.

What is another word for pretty?

Close synonyms include reasonably, moderately, jolly, somewhat, fairly. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pretty a common word?

pretty is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.