秀丽

• Pinyin: xiù lì
• Hanzi breakdown: 秀 = 禾 + 乃 (elegant/graceful); 丽 = 丽 (beautiful/lovely)

Meaning

Gracefully beautiful; delicately lovely in scenery or appearance.

Typically used for natural landscapes, faces, or handwriting that have a refined, delicate beauty. Implies elegance and charm rather than grandeur or magnificence.

Examples

1. 桂林山水秀丽迷人，奇峰绿水相映成趣，吸引了无数国内外游客慕名前来。 Guilin’s landscape is exquisitely beautiful, with strange peaks and emerald waters complementing each other, attracting countless visitors from China and abroad.
2. 她五官秀丽，气质出众，举手投足间流露出一种温婉恬静的独特韵味。 Her features are delicate and refined, and she carries herself with distinction; every gesture reveals a uniquely gentle, serene charm.
3. 这幅山水画笔法细腻，将江南水乡的秀丽风光表现得淋漓尽致，令观者叹为观止。 With meticulous brushwork, this landscape painting captures the exquisite beauty of Jiangnan’s waterways so vividly that viewers can’t help but marvel.

Usage Guide

Context: nature, aesthetics, travel, literature

Tone: positive

Do Say

• 这座小城依山傍水，风景秀丽，每逢节假日都会吸引大批城市游客前来休闲度假。(This small town nestled between mountains and water has gracefully beautiful scenery and attracts large numbers of urban tourists for leisure breaks every holiday.)
• 导游向游客介绍说，这片秀丽的山谷在古代曾是文人雅士隐居吟诗的绝佳之地。(The tour guide told visitors that this gracefully beautiful valley was once an ideal retreat for scholars and poets to live in seclusion and compose verse.)

Don't Say

• 秀丽的噪音 — 秀丽 describes visual or aesthetic beauty; it cannot describe sound; for pleasing sounds use 悦耳 or 动听; 秀丽 is a purely visual aesthetic term

Origin & History

秀 (elegant/graceful) + 丽 (beautiful/lovely) — elegant and delicately beautiful

Cultural Context

Era: Traditional to Modern

Generation: All ages

Social background: Universal