pulchritude

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The Word of the Day for August 30 is:

pulchritude   \PUHL-kruh-tood\   noun
     : physical comeliness

Example sentence:
     "You must not hold my pulchritude against me, for I surely did not ask for 
it, and even if I had, beauty is neither a crime nor sign of doltishness," 
declared Laura.

Did you know?
     If John Keats was right when he wrote that "a thing of beauty is a joy 
forever," then "pulchritude" should bring bliss for many years to come. That 
word has already served English handsomely for centuries; it has been used 
since the 1400s. It's a descendant of the Latin adjective "pulcher," which 
means "beautiful." "Pulcher" hasn't exactly been a wellspring of English terms, 
but it did give us both "pulchritude" and "pulchritudinous," an adjective 
meaning "attractive" or "beautiful." The verb "pulchrify" (a synonym of 
"beautify"), the noun "pulchritudeness" (same meaning as "pulchritude"), and 
the adjective "pulchrous" (meaning "fair or beautiful") are other "pulcher" 
offspring, but those terms have proved that, in at least some linguistic cases, 
beauty is fleeting.