beautiful, good-looking, handsome and pretty

[jadeblomma]

Would anyone know of a reliable source (e.g. dictionary) on collocations of different adjectives in Chinese meaning beautiful, good-looking, handsome and pretty? I am looking for a source that gives you examples of what kind of nouns are seen with for instance 漂亮，美，可爱，好看 etc.

[WestTexas]

dict.baidu.com might be helpful. Assuming your Chinese is good enough to get through the definitions, it's about as detailed a dictionary as you can find.

But for me this is the type of thing I would just ask one of my Chinese friends about.

[imron]

You might find jukuu useful. Other than that, google is also suprisingly useful for this sort of thing. Just make sure you surround the search term with quotes and maybe also use the * operator, e.g. something like "漂亮的*"

[edelweis]

hmmm 帅 is missing in your list

[ma3zi1]

So is 英俊... I have the feeling you are not trying to describe a guy ;)

[kamibaba]

靓is missing in your list B)

[Zio-Σ]

For man handsome is 帅 and not 漂亮, it is used only for girl. Also 健美 but I think is only for man...

靓 is pretty and usually is used with girl (靓女 is also used to adress waitress, I don't know if it is used only in Guangdong).

[renshanrenhai]

To describe woman, we usually use adjectives like, 有气质 (you qi zhi)、优雅 (you ya)——in good manner and elegant , 温柔 （wen rou）——gentle and with good temper, 贤惠 (xian hui)——a merit that a good Chinese wife must has. If a woman is very 贤惠, she must be very good at household tasks and take good care of her husband and children.

If you meet a young girl, you'd better say "温柔", "甜美 （tian mei）sweet", "漂亮good looking" .

If she is a woman married already, you can say, you are “成熟 chengshu （being rational or looks sexy as she aged）”、“贤惠” “有气质”“优雅”.

To describe man, we tend to use adjective "帅shuai", to mean handsome (a colloquial word), "英俊, ying jun" means the same but a bit formal. "酷 ku " means cool. "有风度 you feng du" is equal to saying he is a gentleman.

"Lingoes" is a very useful software through which you can download many useful dictionaries or sources on collocation.