delightful

delightful, delicious, delectable, luscious mean extremely pleasing or gratifying to the senses or to aesthetic taste.

Delightful, the least restricted in its application of these words, may refer to anything that affords keen, lively pleasure and stirs the emotions agreeably, whether the direct appeal is to the mind, the heart, or the senses

{

a delightful view

}

{

a delightful talk

}

{

a delightful companion

}

{

my ears were never better fed with such delightful pleasing harmony— Shak.

}

{

the experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful— Russell

}

{

the most charming and delightful book I have read in many a day— Canby

}

Delicious commonly refers to sensuous pleasures, especially those of taste and smell

{

delicious food

}

{

a delicious sense of warmth

}

but may be applied to anything which is so delightful that one dwells upon it with sensuous gratification

{

her gestures delicious in their modest and sensitive grace— Bennett

}

{

I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicious solitude at Portsmouth— Wharton

}

{

there are people whose society I find delicious— L. P. Smith

}

Delectable in its implications is often indistinguishable from delightful and especially from delicious, though it often suggests more refined or discriminating enjoyment

{

the trees of God, delectable both to behold and taste— Milton

}

{

a delectable tale

}

{

the delectable fragrance of freesia

}

{

its scoring is delectable, with the subtlest of balances, mixed colors and shifting sonorities— Musical America

}

The term is more often used than either delightful or delicious with a humorous or ironical connotation

{

the spoken word of some delectable Sarah Gamp— Montague

}

Luscious adds to delicious an implication of richness (as of flavor, fragrance, coloring, or sound)

{

luscious music

}

As applied to fruits, it suggests fullness of flavor and rich ripe juiciness

{

luscious sun- warmed peaches

}

Like delectable it may be used humorously or ironically, but it then commonly adds the implication of extravagance, exaggeration, or, more specifically, voluptuousness

{

luscious passages of description

}

{

those Don Juans, those melting beauties . . . those luscious adventuresses— Huxley

}

Analogous words: enchanting, charming, fascinating, alluring, attractive (see under ATTRACT): lovely, fair, *beautiful: ineffable (see UNUTTERABLE)

Antonyms: distressing: boring: horrid

Contrasted words: *miserable, wretched: distasteful, obnoxious, repellent, *repugnant