[Grammar] She's the least beautiful girl in my class.

[beachboy]

Kate is the least beautiful girl in our class.

In this sentence, does it mean Kate is beautiful, but not as beautiful as the other girls in my class, or can it mean she's ugly, uglier than all the others?

 

[J&K Tutoring]

Beautiful and ugly are such subjective terms that both could be true. It's interesting that, if we look at antonyms of these two words, the meaning is very different:

beautiful/ugly; most/least

Kate is the least beautiful girl in our class. It's unclear how the speaker rates Kate's appearance. Perhaps he is trying to be tactful.

Kate is the most ugly girl in our class. There is no doubt about how the speaker feels! (Of course, we wouldn't use 'most ugly', we would say ugliest.)

​

 

[beachboy]

While grammatically correct, few native speakers would utter those words.

But what would the sentence itself mean? And how would you say it?

Sorry, I hadn't read J&K's answer.

 

[J&K Tutoring]

It's not considered polite to ever talk about someone else's physical appearance.

 

[beachboy]

It's not considered polite to ever talk about someone else's physical appearance.

Sure. It was just an example. I was focusing merely on the meaning.

 

[Tdol]

The most natural meaning to me would be a euphemistic way of saying that she is not good-looking. It might have a more positive meaning if you were talking about a class of supermodels.

 

[Raymott]

It's not considered polite to ever talk about someone else's physical appearance.

I don't understand that. I would agree that "It's often impolite to talk about someone else's appearance."

Policeman: Can you describe the robber?
Victim: Sorry, that wouldn't be polite.

 

[jutfrank]

The basic meaning is very simple: if you rank all the girls in the class for beauty, Kate comes last.

The adjective beautiful can be used in two ways: as a gradable adjective (where things can be more or less beautiful than other things) and/or as an absolute adjective (where something is either beautiful or it's not). Your question seems to be confusing these two uses.

In this sentence, it's being used gradably. Beauty is seen as a scale. We can't tell from the sentence where on this scale Kate (or any of the other girls) lies. What somebody really means comes from more than just the words he uses alone.

 

[Roman55]

Kate is the least beautiful girl in our class.

In this sentence, does it mean Kate is beautiful, but not as beautiful as the other girls in my class, or can it mean she's ugly, uglier than all the others?

To really understand what is meant you'd need a broader context, but I would tend to think that she is still beautiful, though less so than the others. Beauty is a positive attribute. Least attractive would be an entirely different proposition.