| "pretty" as an adverb to mean "to a moderately high degree" is pretty standard for English speakers. "It's pretty hot" means it's more than warm, but not hot". Interestingly, the forms that you liken to "beautiful" actually parse to a native English speaker as "attractive but not quite beautiful". So, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the top), "pretty" has the connotation of maybe a 7 or 8 on any scale, beauty or otherwise. And that's basically how it always parses out in English. Just consider it as a 7-8 whatever on a 1-10 scale. note if the scale is inverse, it's the same. Suppose 1-10 was a scale of ugliness (with 10 being most ugly) "pretty ugly" is still a 7-8 on that scale. Same with "pretty cold" if the 10 means "coldest possible". "very" is used to emphasize something. "She's very pretty." Means she's somewhere between pretty and outright beautiful, but more on the beautiful side ("she's almost beautiful" has a bad connotation that there's something wrong with her). "It's very hot" would mean not only is it hot, but it's a little extra hot. It's like adding a .5 to anything on that 10 point scale. So if "hot" is 10, very hot is a 10.5. You rarely use it with words that have a moderate intention, except for specific effect, "it's very lukewarm" is not something you'd probably regularly hear. But "it's very cold" is. |