wonderful

1. 1
   excellentadjective

   Extremely good, admirable, or impressive, often to a surprising degree.

   She gave a wonderful performance that left the audience speechless.

   They got wonderful news about the adoption this morning.

   UsageCompares with more wonderful, most wonderful; often in have a wonderful time and it's wonderful to + verb.

   Similarexcellent, great, marvelous, superb, fantastic

   Oppositeterrible, awful, dreadful, horrible

   Note

   The everyday term of praise still carries a trace of the older "astonishing" meaning: what is wonderful is good beyond expectation, and the word is plainly wonder plus -ful, much as German has wundervoll.

2. 2
   astonishingadjectivedated

   Causing a feeling of wonder; remarkably surprising or extraordinary.

   The explorers described wonderful creatures no one had ever seen.

   He is massively corrupt. It is wonderful how the man's popularity survives.

   1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

   Similarmarvelous, astonishing, extraordinary, amazing, remarkable

   Oppositeordinary, commonplace, unremarkable

   Note

   Watch for the negative construction "it is not wonderful that…", which means "it is no wonder that…". It calls something unsurprising, not unpleasant. Likewise, the "wonderful livid glare" in Sheridan Le Fanu's The House by the Churchyard (1863) is astonishing, not admirable. Reading it as praise misreads the line.

3. 3
   veryadverbdialectal

   To a great degree; exceedingly, used in some dialects to strengthen another word.

   The fresh bread smelled wonderful good as it cooled on the rack.

   "Wear your boots, because the path down to the creek is wonderful muddy after all that rain," her uncle warned.

   UsageGoes straight before an adjective, with no -ly: wonderful cold means very cold, with no praise.

   Similarwonderfully, wondrously

   Note

   Richard Johnson's The famous Historie of the Seaven Champions of Christendome and Eric Rücker Eddison's Styrbiorn the Strong (1926) both use it in narration. It carries no praise, so wonderful stormy simply means very stormy. Standard English does the same work with wonderfully or wondrously.

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