Sir Paul McCartney once wrote a song that included the phrase female pulchritude and luminosity. The word pulchritude means “beauty,” but why such an ugly-sounding word for such a lovely thing? Pulchritude derives from pulcher, a Latin word meaning “beautiful,” “handsome,” or “fine,” and has been around in English since the 15th century. If you consider the word pulchritude unappealing, you might say it’s a heterological adjective — that is, one that does not describe itself. An autological word, in contrast, is one that does describe itself. For example, the adjective short is a short word, and polysyllabic has many syllables. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Ugly Word”
Welcome to A Way with Words.
Hey, what’s up?
Nothing. Who’s this?
This is Daryl Smyres. I’m calling from Kip Pleasant Grove Middle School in the southern part of Dallas, Texas.
Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?
Hi, Daryl.
Hey, how’s it going?
I’m a big music fan. I’ve been a big Beatles fan my whole life, and I was listening to a Paul McCartney album.
It came out in 1978.
And on that album, on a song called Famous Groupies, he uses the term pulchritude.
Now, I looked up pulchritude, and I’ve been teaching it to my kids for years.
But a word like that, where it comes from, it kind of sounds kind of German, but I didn’t have a clue where it came from.
Pulchritude. And by pulchritude, he meant what?
He said the line says these magnificent examples of female pulchritude and luminosity.
And I believe when I looked it up, pulchritude meant something kind of like beauty on the inside.
Well, yeah, it means beauty in general.
It’s not Germanic. It goes all the way back to Latin.
And in fact, it’s one of the very first words you ever learn in Latin class, maybe like on the first day, the word pulcher, P-U-L-C-H-E-R, which means beautiful or handsome or fine.
Pulchritude found its way into English in the early 15th century, back when there were people who actually spoke Latin and read it on a regular basis.
I don’t think it’s a particularly lovely word.
No.
Do you, Graham?
Not at all.
Not at all.
And so you’ve got kind of this cognitive dissonance, right?
Because it’s kind of a clunky…
How would you describe it?
What don’t you like about it?
Well, it almost even sounds like kind of a disease, like I have a bad case of poker too.
That’s wonderful.
I never thought about it that way.
But yeah, why such an ugly word or just unattractive word for such a beautiful thing?
Might appreciate the words autological and heterological.
When you are talking about an adjective that’s autological, it’s a word that describes itself.
Like if you use English as an adjective, that’s an autological adjective because English is an English word.
Or if you use the word short, you know, short is a short word, so that’s autological.
And an adjective is heterological if it doesn’t describe itself.
So, for example, the word long is not a long word.
And monosyllabic is a multisyllabic word.
So I think what you’ve got here is a heterological adjective, actually.
So pulchritude is heterological.
Yes.
It does not.
And where in the world did Paul McCartney decide to use it in a song?
I bet if we looked at a corpus, Grant, we’d see a lot of female next to pulchritude.
You know, I mean, it’s almost this sort of self-conscious term that.
A showy literary word that you pull out when you’re just trying to show that you’re clever.
Yeah.
Well, Paul McCartney, if anything, he is clever.
Yeah, he certainly is.
He’s written some very beautiful, some of the best songs ever written as far as I know.
Yeah.
So it wasn’t like he needed a rhyme or something?
No, it doesn’t rhyme with anything.
It’s a very strange song.
So it’s one of the strangest.
And so he had and he has some strange songs, but that’s one of the strangest.
Oh, that’s so interesting.
Because it’s not like mellifluous, which is certainly autological, right?
Mellifluous is a beautiful word.
Yes, beautiful sounding.
Of course, I guess it’s sort of in the ear of the beholder, too.
Maybe we do have listeners who love the word pulchertude.
Pulchertude.
Even pulcher itself doesn’t sound beautiful.
No, it doesn’t.
It doesn’t.
Hey, I appreciate your time for giving me that answer.
It was a great answer.
Well, Daryl, I appreciate your giving us the idea of pulchertude as a disease.
And we appreciate our teachers as well, so keep up the good work.
Hey, seventh grade, I got my work cut out for me.
Absolutely.
Oh, you do.
I’ve got a seventh grader at home.
I know all about that.
All right.
Take care now.
Thanks so much.
Bye-bye.
Thanks, Daryl.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
