Word.ws English Dictionary

pritty

pritty is the archaic spelling of pretty.

Meaning of pretty

Adjective

pretty (comparative prettier, superlative prettiest)

  1. Pleasant to the sight or other senses; attractive, especially of women or children.
    • Having brought it to a close, he took his way to the Kursaal. The great German watering-place is one of the prettiest nooks in Europe, and of a summer evening in the gaming days, five-and-twenty years ago, it was one of the most brilliant scenes.1879, Henry James, chapter III, in Confidence, London: Chatto & Windus
    Synonyms:
    dainty
  2. Of objects or things: nice-looking, appealing.
    • Some fans may have mistaken the album’s floatiness for aimlessness, but Mr. Mercer’s songs have never been sneakier, or prettier.2007 October 25, Kelefa Sanneh, “Songs With a Sneaky Streak”, in The New York Times
  3. (derogatory, often) Fine-looking; only superficially attractive; initially appealing but having little substance; see petty.
    • Damned by the Socialists as "traitors to the working class," its leaders were decried by Tories as "faceless peddlers of politics with a pretty little trinket for every taste."1962 September 28, “New Life for the Liberals”, in Time
  4. (UK, derogatory, sometimes) Effeminate.
  5. Cunning; clever, skilful.
    • In the end, however, it was a very pretty shot, right across the chasm; killed first fire, and the brute fell headlong into the brook […].1877, George Hesekiel, Bayard Taylor, Bismarck his Authentic Biography, page 380
  6. (dated) Moderately large; considerable.
    • they flung all the goods in the house out at the windows into the street, or into the sea, as they supposed; thus they continued mad a pretty season […].1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition I, section...

See all 15 meanings of pretty

Questions about pritty

What is pritty the archaic spelling of?
Pritty is the archaic spelling of pretty.

Words near pritty in the dictionary

  1. Pritil
  2. Pritt
  3. prittle-prattle
  4. prittle-prattles
  5. Prittlewell
  6. pritty
  7. Pritula
  8. pritumumab
  9. pritzim
  10. Pritzker
  11. Pritzkers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pritty (page history and authors); pretty (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pritty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pritty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.