Dictionary formpulcher, pulchra, pulchrum

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#723 of 1,000Core 1000

Translation

beautiful, handsome; fine, noble

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Examples

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The beautiful girl is sitting by the spring.

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The day is fine and the sky is bright.

aedificaverunt.

They built a beautiful temple on the mountain.

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Nothing is more beautiful than truth.

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He moved the people with fine words.

Pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum is a first and second declension adjective that drops the e of the stem everywhere except the masculine nominative singular. The comparative and superlative are irregular in shape but regular in behaviour: pulchrior, pulcherrimus, like all adjectives whose masculine ends in -er.

Two things to watch. The h is a piece of learned spelling, added because Romans thought the word looked Greek; the corpus is full of the older, plainer pulcra, pulcris, and the medieval scribes go back and forth without meaning anything by it. And pulcher is broader than "pretty": applied to a deed, a death or a cause it means noble or honourable, which is why Cicero can call a thing pulchrum without anyone picturing it.

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pulcher: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "pulcher" (beautiful, handsome; fine, noble): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is taught in chapter 8, lesson 3: pulcher, insignis, paulus and 5 more words.