picturesque

UK/ˌpɪkt͡ʃəˈɹɛsk/US/ˌpɪkt͡ʃəˈɹɛsk/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,672 of 15,258leans written

Picturesque means pretty enough to be painted or photographed. A picturesque village, picturesque ruins, picturesque scenery.

It was a serious eighteenth-century category, sitting between the beautiful and the sublime and meaning rough and irregular in an agreeable way. It has softened into a mild compliment, and applied to a poor district it can sound like a tourist looking away.

Definitions of picturesque

1adjectivepicturesquePretty enough to be painted or photographed.B2+
“We stayed in a picturesque fishing village with colourful houses along the harbour.”

picturesque is a quality.

Also accepted in games: scenic

Where it comes from

From picture plus -esque, after French pittoresque and Italian pittoresco, in the manner of a painting.

French
pittoresque
English, today
picturesque

Built from

picture · French — a picture, painting

From picture + -esque, a French pittoresque, from picture (“a picture, painting”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives

Practise this word

picturesque in the wild

Nikolaus Pevsner described Blaise Hamlet as "the ne plus ultra of picturesque layout and design".
Blaise Hamlet
The south coast, dubbed the Cornish Riviera, is home to picturesque harbour villages such as Fowey and Falmouth.
Places of interest in Cornwall
Because of the picturesque landscape the village is on the path of the National Blue Trail.
Mályinka
The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque.
Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus· Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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