Felicitous
adj ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Characterized by felicity.; Appropriate, apt, fitting.
"Walter again pursued his way, lost in a very mixed reverie; sometimes writhing under an idea of degradation, in thus making a trade of his talents; and then, again, somewhat consoled by the pride of art; for how many felicitous and stinging epigrams arose in his mind!"
- 2 Characterized by felicity.; Auspicious, fortunate, lucky.
"There are a variety of charms, of various kinds, for which there are no names and no particular uses; but they are considered felicitous, and are therefore worn by the poorer classes, who cannot buy the more valuable charms."
- 3 Characterized by felicity.; Causing happiness or pleasure.
"The same chronicler [John Capgrave] makes Henry of Agincourt die a day earlier than he really did, apparently only for the purpose of manufacturing a sort of coincidence. 'His end fell well on the feast of Saint Felix, for he was felicitous in all things—felicitous in endowing the church, felicitous in ordering more clearly the divine offices, felicitous in the administration of justice, and in fine, felicitous in all his life.[']"
- 4 Of a sentence or utterance: semantically and pragmatically coherent; fitting in the context.
"This sentence is grammatical; it is just not felicitous."
- 1 exhibiting an agreeably appropriate manner or style wordnet
- 2 marked by good fortune wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the whisky bottle alone."
Etymology
From felicity + -ous.
More for "felicitous"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.