> pulchritudinous

wow, that's some word of the year type shit. it means "beautiful" for those who were about to look it up.

To my non-native ear it sounds/looks like a word that means anything but beautiful.

Basically, what does horgous look like https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cogs.12791

Fear not, there’s basically universal agreement that pulchritude is an ugly word.

A lot of basic first-250-words-of-latin vocabulary has become pretentious English words for some reason.

Pulchritudinous [ pulchre = beautiful ]

Virile [vir = man]

Tacit [tacite = quietly]

Ossify [os = bone]

Stultify [stultus = dumb]

Puerile [puer = boy]

Amicable [amice = friendly]

This also seems to reflect the debate on agglutinative vs. isolating languages, or at least languages with more words vs. less words. One style is great for creative prose and philosophy, the other is practical for real world communication with those with varying skill levels.

See Lojban for a very practical and clear language, which only allows you to create words packed with too much meaning when you are constructing metaphors using rafsi forms.

Ah, pulchritude. A word that everyone agrees is quite inapt; it’s an ugly word.

Since we're being pedantic, I'd point out that pulchritudinous is only used for people of great physical beauty, it's not a generic replacement for beautiful.

A better term might be “purple prose” (which certainly means something quite different, but probably more accurately derides the style).