Meanings
comparative more beauteous · superlative most beauteous
- formalliterarypoeticbeautiful.
O wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there heere? / How beauteous mankinde is? O braue new world / That has ſuch people in't.
1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 17, column 22 more examples
VVhy didſt thou promiſe ſuch a beautious day, And make me trauaile forth without my cloake, To let bace cloudes ore-take me in my way, Hiding thy brau'ry in their rotten ſmoke.
1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 34”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLCLet Prudence yet obſtruct thy venturous way; / And take good heed, what men will think and ſay: / That beauteous Emma vagrant courſes took; / Her father's houſe and civil life forſook; / That, full of youthful blood, and fond of man; / She to the wood-land with an exile ran.
1709, Matthew Prior, “Henry and Emma. […]”, in The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior […], volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan, […], published 1779, →OCLC, page 246
Synonyms & antonyms
adjective(poetic) beautiful, especially to the sight
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Middle Englishbeautevous
- Englishbeauteous
From Middle English beautevous, bewteose, beautuous, boyteous, beuteus, beuteowse, bewtyvows, equivalent to beauty + -ous and/or beauty + -eous.
More words from Middle English
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with beauteous
All rhymes →Cite this entry
beauteous. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/beauteous
“beauteous.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/beauteous. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “beauteous,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/beauteous.
Source: beauteous on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.