The impetus for my question is Vinland Saga, S2E23. Somewhat avoiding
spoilers, T has belonged to vicious savage vikings all his life. But T, after
years of murder, uniquely begins to pursue and espouse peace. After T
confronts a great man C, C says of T: "美しい男だ". This is translated as "You're a
beautiful man".

[![Vinland Saga
example](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MlBOI.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MlBOI.png)

There is obviously no physical/literal aspect to this comment by C. In
English, it's clear that "beautiful" is referring to T's spirit, rather than
his physical appearance, and that's what I would have believed from the
Japanese as well.

But [looking it up on jisho.org](https://jisho.org/search/utsukushii), it says
that "utsukushii" can also mean "pure (heart, friendship, etc.)​". I always
thought utsukushii was purely associated with "beauty", and nothing else. But
jisho.org implies it's strongly associated with purity and other such "clean"
values/virtues.

So my question is: is 美しい simply as nuanced as the word "beautiful" is? Or
does could 美しい explicitly imply certain values/ideas in particular (that the
English word "beauty" doesn't imply as directly)? And as a follow-up: is C
implying that T is "pure" in a derogatory manner (e.g. medetai = naive), or in
a reverent manner?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-06-21T15:51:03.730
100022
2023-06-22T05:54:21.300
35659
question
meaning word-choice words spoken-language
Utsukushii (美しい) deeper meaning different than just "beautiful"?
The short answer would be "There is no deeper meaning than 'beautiful'".
Whenever you feel 'beautiful' works as a translation of 美しい, you can use it.
If I understand correctly, "beautiful friendship" and "beautiful spirit" are
natural phrases in English, so you can safely use them as the translation of
美しい友情 and 美しい心, respectively.

However, every language has its own set of
[collocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation) rules, so there can
be rare cases where 'beautiful' cannot be idiomatically translated as 美しい, and
vice versa. For example, Japanese people don't usually say 今日は美しい日だ in the
same way English speakers say "It's a beautiful day". But such edge cases do
not necessarily mean 'beautiful' and 美しい are different concepts. Currently, I
can't think of a situation where it would be definitely better to translate
美しい as 'pure' rather than as 'beautiful', but there might be such a case.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-06-22T05:54:21.300
100032
2023-06-22T05:54:21.300
5010
100022
answer