Handsome Women, Gorgeous Men: A corpus-based analysis of frequency, animacy and gender over time in adjectives of beauty

Kit Callaway
University of Georgia

Abstract

In 80,016 tokens of adjective-noun pairings, taken from historical (1810-2009)corpus data, 13 beauty adjective types were examined for changes in frequency patterns over time and to discover if their noun collocations were frequently masculine, feminine animate, or inanimate. The most common types are consistent in frequency, while less-common types are subject to trends. Handsome, gorgeous, and good-looking favor masculine nouns, and pretty favors feminine ones. Good-looking and handsome favor humans, and lovely and beautiful inanimates. These collocational meanings change over time. Handsome had a temporary peak of femininity in the late 19th century, while gorgeous has grown more animate.

 

Callaway, Kit. 2022. Handsome Women, Gorgeous Men: A corpus-based analysis of frequency, animacy and gender over time in adjectives of beauty. UGA Working Papers in Linguistics 5, 106-122. The Linguistics Society at UGA: Athens, GA.

 

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