Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You need to learn Latin better  .
"Pulchritudinous" does not come from the adjective "pulcher/pulchra"but from the related noun "pulchritudino -onis" ("beauty", "excellence"). That's the reason for the "whole bunch of letters at the end" . |
The noun you cite would more properly be "pulchritudo , -inis" (no such noun ending as "-tudino"; it's ((vowel)-tudo) but of course this in turn derives from the adjective pulcher, its basis. (As, for example, "certitude" does from "cert-ain").
There is another factor : pulcher + -tudo + *osus* (before the necessary transformations. Same suffix as in "comatose" or "lachrymose."