I heard the phrase pretty much today and wondered how a word that started out meaning "attractive" came to mean almost anything. You hear "that's pretty bad" or "that's pretty good." According to dictionary.com, it can mean clever, very bad, to a fair degree, considerable in size (i.e. pretty big or pretty small), as well as attractive.

Does anyone know how the rather vague meanings evolved from a meaning that was quite (pretty ) clear? Do you Brits use pretty this way, as much as we do?

I would have guessed this was modernish (19th or late-18th century) slang, but evidently it goes right back.

The original meaning of the adjective was 'ingenious, clever' of people then also of things, and in late Middle English it became a very general term for 'fine, proper'. (The 1400s equivalent of 'nice', perhaps.) It is this that has spawned the modern senses:

i. delicately good-looking (of women, etc.) [mid 1400s]
ii. fine, real, thumping (a pretty pickle = a fine mess you've got us into it) [mid 1500s]
iii. (adv.) rather so, somewhat [mid 1500s]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: aput,

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Originally posted by aput:
The original meaning of the adjective ['pretty'] was 'ingenious, clever'

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Etymology on line details this, stating, "O.E. prættig (W.Saxon), *prettig (Mercian) "cunning, skillful, artful," from prætt, *prett "a trick, wile, craft"." I read this as indicating that aput's 'ingenious, clever' should be taken in the sense of an ingenious or clever artifice or trap.

How apt, for a pretty girl can indeed be a trap, produced by cosmetic artifice.

I had thought it was a newer use, too. Thanks, aput. Can I assume then that it is used all those ways in England, as well as in the U.S.?

Yes, it's standard English in the adverbial sense (pretty big).