Advocabulary: Daffy’s on Broadway
This display was seen in a window of the Financial District location of Daffy’s, a discount clothing retailer:
Pulchritude is an ugly-sounding word simply meaning “physical beauty.” Its provenance is the Latin pulchritÅ«dÅ, also meaning beauty. I was unable to find any other words in English using this root (that’s why it sounds so weird!), although I did discover, in an online gardening forum, that there is an Aeschynanthus pulcher that is also known as a “lipstick plant,” which makes a certain sort of sense.
Since we’re talking about beauty, now seems as fine a place as any to mention that, in India, the word “homely” means “domestic” (as in, a quality a traditionally-minded man would want in a traditionally-minded wife), but in U.S. English, homely means “plain, unattractive,” and is a somewhat less popular attribute in a romantic partner.
Just Google the phrase “homely wife,” and you’ll get lots of Indian matrimonial ads containing phrases that, in U.S. English, are oxymorons: “Professional male seeks beautiful and homely wife.”