what is beautiful?

beau·ti·ful [byoo-tuh-fuhl]

–adjective
1.  having beauty; having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind
2.  excellent of its kind
3.  wonderful; very pleasing or satisfying.

–noun
4.  the concept of beauty
5.  beautiful things or people collectively: the good and the beautiful.
6.  the ideal of beauty: to strive to attain the beautiful.

–interjection
7.  wonderful; fantastic
8.  extraordinary; incredible: used ironically: Your car brokedown? Beautiful!

Synonyms
admirable, alluring, angelic, appealing, attractive, beauteous, bewitching, charming, classy, comely, cute, dazzling, delicate, delightful, divine, elegant, enticing, excellent, exquisite, fair, fascinating, fine, foxy, good-looking, gorgeous, graceful, grand, handsome, ideal, lovely, magnificent, marvelous, nice, pleasing, pretty, pulchritudinous, radiant, ravishing, refined, resplendent, seemly, shapely, sightly, splendid, statuesque, stunning, sublime, superb, symmetrical, taking, well-formed, wonderful.

Origin: 
1520–30; beauty + -ful

Beauty
Date of Origin 13th c.

Beauty came via Anglo-Norman beute and Old French bealte from Vulgar Latin *bellitas, a derivative of Latin bellus ‘beautiful’ (this developed from an earlier, unrecorded *dwenolos, a diminutive form of Old Latin *duenos, *duonos, which is related to Latin bonus ‘good’ –source of English bonus (18th c.), bounty (13th c.), and bounteous (14thc.)). Other English words from the same ultimate source are beau (17thc.) and its feminine form belle (17th c.); beatific (17th c.), which comes from Latin beātus ‘blessed, happy’, the past participle of the verb beāre, a relative of bellus; embellish; and bibelot ‘small ornament’ (19th c.), originally a French word based ultimately on *belbel, a reduplication of Old French bel ‘beautiful’.