felicitous
adjective
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Before a mouse named Mickey ruled the animation scene, there was Felix—a wily black cat who is often regarded as the first cartoon star, and who became an international sensation in the early 20th century for films such as Felix in Hollywood (1923) and Comicalamities (1928). “Felix,” you might say, was a felicitous—that is, apt—name for the happy, Chaplinesque feline. Felix, after all, is a Latin word meaning “happy” or “fruitful,” and the ancestor of the English adjective felicitous, which can mean both “pleasant and delightful,” and “very well suited or expressed.” With regard to the “apt” sense of felicitous, it’s important to note that it is most often applied to someone’s actions or expressions (as in “a felicitous phrase”). In other words, no matter how fitting someone’s choice of pants may be for, say, the world premiere of a new animated movie, it would not be fitting to say “they arrived at the theater wearing felicitous pants.”
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Examples of felicitous in a Sentence
Stephen Farber, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2024
And in one of those felicitous culinary accidents like the Toll House cookie, wound up with a gluten-free product.
—Florence Fabricant, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2024
Advertisement Some of Sondheim’s best jokes are swallowed up in the imbalance between singers and orchestra, a situation exacerbated by a perhaps unanticipated and more felicitous problem: the audiences’ frequent boisterous response.
—Peter Marks, Washington Post, 27 Mar. 2023
Pebble Beach was not a felicitous meeting of land and sea.
—Doug Ferguson, USA TODAY, 5 Feb. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Felicitous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/felicitous. Accessed 16 Nov. 2024.
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felicitous
adjective
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