Words at Play : Top 10 Unusually Long and Interesting Words, Vol. 2
#4: Pulchritudinous
Definition:
physically beautiful
About the word:
If the meaning of this word seems counterintuitive, it's probably because the word's Latin ancestor pulcher ("beautiful") is unfamiliar, and pulchritudinous sounds more disgusting than enchanting.
But Richard Burton used it to describe his first impression of Elizabeth Taylor: "... the most astonishingly self-contained, pulchritudinous, remote, removed, inaccessible woman I had ever seen."
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