As unbeautiful as the word may sound to your ears, “pulchritude” stems directly from the Latin “pulcher,” which means “beautiful.” The noun “pulchritude” is likely only used in a literary or poetic sense for “beauty,” but there’s also the adjective “pulchritudinous,” which means “beautiful.” There’s a whole category of English words that don’t sound like their definitions: “Suffrage” is not suffering, but rather the right to vote, and “noisome” isn’t noisy, but it describes an extremely offensive smell.