pretty
Definitions
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Pretty. Neapolitan -
WordNet 3.6
- adj pretty pleasing by delicacy or grace; not imposing "pretty girl","pretty song","pretty room"
- adj pretty (used ironically) unexpectedly bad "a pretty mess","a pretty kettle of fish"
- adv pretty to a moderately sufficient extent or degree "pretty big","pretty bad","jolly decent of him","the shoes are priced reasonably","he is fairly clever with computers"
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Additional illustrations & photos:
PRETTY MAID, PRETTY MAID
MARY HAD A PRETTY BIRD
WHERE ARE YOU GOING, MY PRETTY MAID
My Pretty Maid music
WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO MY PRETTY MAID
Everything vanished and, instead, there appeared a pretty little peasant's cottage
THE PRETTY DORKING
It was rather a pretty little picture
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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Interesting fact: In WWII, when allied armies reached the Rhine River the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it). Gen. Patton had himself photographed in the act
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- Pretty Affectedly nice; foppish; -- used in an ill sense. "The pretty gentleman is the most complaisant in the world."
- adv Pretty In some degree; moderately; considerably; rather; almost; -- less emphatic than very; as, I am pretty sure of the fact; pretty cold weather. "Pretty plainly professes himself a sincere Christian."
- Pretty Mean; despicable; contemptible; -- used ironically; as, a pretty trick; a pretty fellow.
- Pretty Moderately large; considerable; as, he had saved a pretty fortune. "Wavering a pretty while."
- Pretty Pleasing by delicacy or grace; attracting, but not striking or impressing; of a pleasing and attractive form a color; having slight or diminutive beauty; neat or elegant without elevation or grandeur; pleasingly, but not grandly, conceived or expressed; as, a pretty face; a pretty flower; a pretty poem.
"This is the prettiest lowborn lass that ever
Ran on the greensward." - Pretty Stout; strong and brave; intrepid; valiant. "He] observed they were pretty men, meaning not handsome."
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Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
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Interesting fact: The curvature of the earth is pretty close to eight inches every mile, or 66 feet every hundred miles.
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- pretty Crafty; cunning; clever; shrewd; keen.
- pretty Strong and bold; warlike; accomplished in arms.
- pretty Comely; handsome; good-looking; hence, in later use, pleasing to the esthetic sense; attractive through grace, elegance, neatness, harmony of parts, or delicacy of outline or coloring; having delicate beauty; pleasing the eye or ear rather than impressing the mind: as, a pretty face; a pretty cottage; a pretty picture. In this use the word implies a certain slightness, limitation, or lack of power, and hence is easily made depreciative in cases where these attributes are out of place.
- pretty Hence Affectedly neat or fastidious about one's personal appearance; finical; foppish.
- pretty Pleasing in general; pleasing to the mind; interesting; entertaining; gratifying.
- pretty Excellent; good; fine; nice: said loosely, like fine and nice, of almost any object or action as a general term of commendation, and also, like fine and nice, often used ironically, especially in exclamatory sentences.
- pretty Good or sufficient; moderately large in quantity, number, extent, duration, etc.; considerable.
- pretty A term of endearment, supplying the place of a diminutive.
- pretty Synonyms Handsome, Fair, etc. See beautiful.
- pretty Moderately; reasonably; tolerably: expressing a degree less than very: as, a farm pretty well stocked; pretty good lodgings; I am pretty sure of the fact.
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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
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Interesting fact: 57% save pretty gift paper to reuse.
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- adj Pretty pret′i tasteful: pleasing to the eye: having attractive but not striking beauty: neat: beautiful without dignity: small: affected: moderately large, considerable: puny, weak (a term of endearment): (in contempt) fine: :
- adv Pretty in some degree: moderately
- adj Pretty pret′i (obs.) shrewd, cunning
- adj Pretty pret′i (obs.) strong, warlike
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Quotations
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“We do pretty much whatever we want to.” -
“Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.”
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“Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.” -
“There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.” -
“Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination.” -
“But it is a pretty thing to see what money will do!”
Idioms
A pretty penny - If something costs a pretty penny, it is very expensive.
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Come to a pretty pass - If something has come to a pretty pass, then it is in a difficult, unfavourable or negative situation.
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Sit pretty - Someone who's sitting pretty is in a very advantageous situation.
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Etymology
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
OE. prati, AS. prættig, prætig, crafty, sly, akin to præt, prætt, deceit, trickery, Icel. prettugr, tricky, prettr, a trick; probably fr. Latin, perhaps through Celtic; cf. W. praith, act, deed, practice, LL. practica, execution, practice, plot. See Practice
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
A.S. prættig, tricky—prætt, trickery; prob. Low L. practicus—Gr. praktikos—prattein, to do.
Usage
In literature:
Nora was pretty, but Nora was not richly endowed with pretty frocks.
"Red Rose and Tiger Lily" by L. T. Meade
His horse was breathing pretty heavy; the snow blowing pretty bad.
"Laramie Holds the Range" by Frank H. Spearman
If she's half as pretty as you are, she is well worth seeing.
"Janet's Love and Service" by Margaret M Robertson
Old Man Smith must of knew his business pretty well, for what he done with Bonnie Bell was considerable.
"The Man Next Door" by Emerson Hough
My pretty, pretty lady's hat is much too big for me now.
"How It All Came Round" by L. T. Meade
How eager and pretty they looked!
"A Little Girl of Long Ago" by Amanda Millie Douglas
Yet the prelude had, in truth, been a pretty enough piece of music.
"The History of Sir Richard Calmady" by Lucas Malet
Ain't the baskets pretty?
"At the Little Brown House" by Ruth Alberta Brown
But yours is so pretty and odd.
"A Little Girl in Old Boston" by Amanda Millie Douglas
They look pretty much the same, both of 'em.
"Country Neighbors" by Alice Brown
And you must have met so many pretty girls!
"Blow The Man Down" by Holman Day
Moreover, Mrs. Palmer had assured him that Mollie was a very pretty girl.
"Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906" by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The room was pretty, but he was a connoisseur and was not satisfied with prettiness.
"Partners of the Out-Trail" by Harold Bindloss
WHERE THE PRETTY PATH LED.
"Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad" by Various
Three rings on one finger at one time and the same time was going it pretty strong, in the opinion of the Black Rim ladies.
"Rim o' the World" by B. M. Bower
I mean to run over and borrow a spoonful of soda pretty soon, just to find out.
"Cloudy Jewel" by Grace Livingston Hill
In this way pretty Michal picked up a very considerable store of general information.
"Pretty Michal" by Mór Jókai
Pretty recollections, I should say!
"Rose MacLeod" by Alice Brown
Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other.
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain
And oh, the pretty hats, the fresh crisp flowers!
"Helen Grant's Schooldays" by Amanda M. Douglas
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In poetry:
Four suitors at once unto her did go;
They crav-ed her favour, but still she said no;
I would not wish gentles to marry with me;
Yet ever they honour-ed pretty Bessee.
They crav-ed her favour, but still she said no;
I would not wish gentles to marry with me;
Yet ever they honour-ed pretty Bessee.
"The Beggar's Daughter Of Bethnal Green" by Henry Morley
He had a dainty lute under his arm,
He touch-ed the strings, which made such a charm,
Says, "Please you to hear any music of me,
I'll sing you a song of pretty Bessee."
He touch-ed the strings, which made such a charm,
Says, "Please you to hear any music of me,
I'll sing you a song of pretty Bessee."
"The Beggar's Daughter Of Bethnal Green" by Henry Morley
Who lights the fire—that forth so gracefully
And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke?
Some pretty one who never felt the yoke—
Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she.
And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke?
Some pretty one who never felt the yoke—
Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she.
"Who Lights The Fire?" by George MacDonald
Then Bessy, that was of a beauty so bright,
All clad in grey russet, and late in the night
From father and mother alone parted she;
Who sigh-ed and sobb-ed for pretty Bessee.
All clad in grey russet, and late in the night
From father and mother alone parted she;
Who sigh-ed and sobb-ed for pretty Bessee.
"The Beggar's Daughter Of Bethnal Green" by Henry Morley
Then Bessy she sigh-ed, and thus she did say,
"My father and mother I mean to obey;
First get their good will, and be faithful to me,
And you shall enjoy your pretty Bessee."
"My father and mother I mean to obey;
First get their good will, and be faithful to me,
And you shall enjoy your pretty Bessee."
"The Beggar's Daughter Of Bethnal Green" by Henry Morley
"A poor beggar's daughter did dwell on a green,
Who for her fairness might well be a queen:
A blithe bonny lass, and a dainty was she,
And many one call-ed her pretty Bessee.
Who for her fairness might well be a queen:
A blithe bonny lass, and a dainty was she,
And many one call-ed her pretty Bessee.
"The Beggar's Daughter Of Bethnal Green" by Henry Morley
In news:
"I'm not looking to do ´pretty,'" Miller said.
It will fit naturally into pretty much any interior.
We can all agree that basic beer goes pretty well with a basic burger.
Overall, the movie looks pretty fun.
The evening's other main-stage headliners are Journey and Pretty Lights.
To understand Bain/Romney, watch "Pretty Woman".
If you grow up in Africa, you learn the law of the jungle pretty quick.
Pretty Bird of Prey .
WEST HAVEN — Other than bringing doughnuts for his classmates, Jett Longmore started the celebration of his 11th birthday Tuesday pretty routinely.
Don't judge a book by its cover, especially when it comes to this pretty little "journal".
This is some pretty disturbing Clockwork Orange stuff coming up from Cincinnati.
Gabe Carimi ends up with Bears in NFL draft 2011, but it's not pretty.
If you own a winery in the upper Midwest, you're pretty much on your own when it comes to getting wine into the bottle .
Photograph by Chris Mueller Archaeology isn't always pretty.
The Pretty Powerful Bobbi Brown.
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In science:
The convergence to the asymptotic f (x) is pretty fast and already for moderate N = 2n with n = 4 (N K = 28), theoretical formula (10) agrees with numerical λi to better than 1%.
Entanglement of random vectors
As alluded to earlier, these observations are pretty much similar to the results obtained our in the toy models in Paper I revealed.
Particle creation, classicality and related issues in quantum field theory: II. Examples from field theory
Due to the rigidity of supersymmetric field theory, a quiver representation pretty much fixes the combinatorial type of the field theory under investigation.
Azumaya-type noncommutative spaces and morphisms therefrom: Polchinski's D-branes in string theory from Grothendieck's viewpoint
The generating function for Wicketed Ferrers diagrams is very pretty.
The Half-Perimeter Generating Function of Gated and Wicketed Ferrers diagrams
The upper bound obtained in [And07] (see 1.1) was pretty far from reality.
Constants of concentration for a simple recurrent random walk on random environment
The preliminary expression for the asymptotics of the moments can now be proven in pretty much the same way as in Theorem 1.
The height and range of watermelons without wall
Asymptotics for this quantity can be obtained in pretty much the same way as Theorem 1.
The height and range of watermelons without wall
Taking into account different notations of high-symmetry points for these two different crystal structures one can find these dispersions pretty similar to each other.
Electronic Structure of Prototype AFe_2As_2 and ReOFeAs High-Temperature Superconductors: a Comparison
It is pretty clear as to why we call this generalization integral shot-noise field.
Directionally Convex Ordering of Random Measures, Shot Noise Fields and Some Applications to Wireless Communications
Indeed, at the end of the day, it is pretty clear that Jarrett’s condition has nothing to do with the completeness of physical state descriptions.
Local Causality and Completeness: Bell vs. Jarrett
If the rectangle has height one this is pretty obvious, since the corresponding representation is the trivial one.
A note on certain Kronecker coefficients
We report here an empirical study on various optimization techniques proposed in Section 4.2 and Section 4.4, as the behavior of the straightforward implementation of our algorithms is pretty much predicted by the aforementioned theoretical analysis.
Semantics and Evaluation of Top-k Queries in Probabilistic Databases
This is done in way pretty similar to the first part of the proof of Proposition 6.1.
The speed of a biased random walk on a percolation cluster at high density
If this fails (the “bad” case), then the first order theory T P is pretty much useless.
Lovely pairs of models: the non first order case
It is especially remarkable because its boundaries are pretty close to the boundaries of an unidentified REF of 10-TeV cosmic rays found with the Milagro array .
Regions of Excessive Flux of PeV Cosmic Rays
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