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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

lovely.

Delightful for beauty, harmony, or grace.

6 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈlʌv.li/[ˈlʌv.lɪi̯]
  1. Delightful for beauty, harmony, or grace.

    It's a lovely day and the sun is shining.
    The music box plays a lovely melody.
  2. Nice; wonderful.

    It would be lovely to have a little more money to spend.
  3. Inspiring love or friendship; amiable.

    obsolete
  4. Loving, filled with love.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lovely, luvelich, lufli, from Old English luflīċ, luflīc (“amiable, loving, lovable”), equivalent to love + -ly.

noun/ˈlʌv.li/[ˈlʌv.lɪi̯]
  1. An attractive, lovely person, especially a (professional) beauty.

    informal
    a calendar depicting young lovelies in bikinis
  2. Term of fond address.

    Goodbye, my lovely.
  3. A lovely object.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English lovely, luvelich, lufli, from Old English luflīċ, luflīc (“amiable, loving, lovable”), equivalent to love + -ly.

adv/ˈlʌv.li/[ˈlʌv.lɪi̯]
  1. In a lovely fashion or manner; beautifully.

    informal
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lovely, luveliche, from Old English luflīċe (“lovingly, amiably, kindly, dearly, with good will or love, willingly”), equivalent to love + -ly.

adj/ˈlʌv.li/[ˈlʌv.lɪi̯]
  1. Worthy of praise.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lofly, lovely (“praiseworthy; laudatory”), equivalent to lofe + -ly. Cognate with Dutch loffelijk (“laudable, praiseworthy”), German löblich (“commendable, laudable, praiseworthy”), Swedish lovlig (“permissible”). More at lofe, love.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.