Adjective:

(of a person, especially a woman or child) attractive in a delicate way without being truly beautiful.

‘a pretty little girl with an engaging grin’

Adverb:

To a moderately high degree; fairly.

‘he looked pretty fit for his age’

‘it was a pretty bad injury’

Pretty is, well, a pretty interesting word. The definition that immediately comes to mind for you is probably the first one above. What really interests me about this definition is that last part: without being truly beautiful. Pretty is certainly a less powerful word than beautiful. Because of that it, like nice, feels almost like an insult to use it to describe someone. Sure, it’s technically a positive word, but when you’ve got so many other adjectives you can use, calling someone pretty feels like a deliberate choice to not use something more unambiguously complimentary.

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