hauntingly beautiful
2
6.1
- adjective
- /ˈhɔːntɪŋli ˈbjuːtɪfəl/
:
hermoso de manera inquietante
- A seventh-grade girl starts humming a hauntingly beautiful tune from "Phantom of the Opera."
- a hauntingly beautiful song
Examples
-
Personal lyrics, hypnotic beat, hauntingly beautiful horns: it was all there.
Blog text (2) -
She was a stunning woman—dark-skinned and dark-eyed—and so hauntingly beautiful that she created a sense of confusion and sadness in anyone who saw her unveiled.
Fiction book (1999) -
The music Bumstead makes is sad and hauntingly beautiful.
Fiction book (1998) -
And John Lennon's voice is so hauntingly beautiful!
Blog text (11) -
The male humpbacks create eerie,hauntingly beautiful tunes.
-
"Cancer Road" is a hauntingly beautiful exploration of life's sometimes surprising curves.
Blog text (23) -
Down Under, the Outback doesn't have the market cornered on remote, hauntingly beautiful landscapes.
Blog text (17) -
In the hauntingly beautiful opening of Anil's Ghost, Ondaatje draws a vivid picture of the devastating trauma that accompanies unlocatable death.
Academic text (2008) -
On the harrowing yet hauntingly beautiful The Backward Path, Melchior pays tribute to his wife Letha while trying to make sense of the impermanence of life.
Blog text (23) -
The landscape was hauntingly beautiful, with mist rising over the mountains at dawn.
Synonyms
692
2.0
Very beautiful to look at
253
3.6
Very beautiful and impressive in a way that makes people admire it
210
3.7
Very beautiful and impressive to look at
105
5.5
Very beautiful, delicate, and well made, like a piece of jewelry
77
3.5
A very beautiful and surprising sight that amazes you
22
8.8
Very light and delicate in a way that seems heavenly
5
9.9
Pleasant to look at, often in a gentle or graceful way
1
5.8
So beautiful or interesting that it holds your full attention
1
7.5
Very beautiful and impressive to look at
Antonyms
How Beautiful
Surface Forms
Morphology
hauntingly + beautiful
The adverb 'hauntingly' is a figurative extension of 'haunt' (to linger in the mind) modifying 'beautiful', so the overall sense — striking, lingering beauty often tinged with mystery or sadness — can be inferred from the parts but requires a metaphorical jump. Because the meaning is not strictly compositional or literal but follows a common metaphor of emotions 'haunting' someone, it is only partially predictable to a B1 learner who knows the constituents.
Etymology
Hauntingly beautiful comes from the image of something like a ghost or a memory that stays in your mind. The word haunting suggests a ghost or memory that 'stays in your mind', and beautiful means lovely, so together the phrase means 'so lovely and strange that it keeps coming back to you and feels a little sad or mysterious'.