lindo

pretty; cute

“Near-synonyms: bello, hermoso, guapo”

From Old Spanish lindo, of uncertain origin, but probably from Latin legitimus (“lawful, proper”) through metathesis and assimilation: *lid(i)mo > *limdo > lindo. If so, a doublet of the learned borrowing legítimo. Corominas considers both lindo and its possible Portuguese cognate lídimo (“legitimate”) as semi-learned terms, but this is uncertain. Compare English legible. Some sources derive it from Latin limpidus (“clean”) instead, but this is less likely for both phonetic and semantic reasons.