telegenic
/ˌtɛləˈd͡ʒɛnɪk/adjective
telegenic is an adjective meaning “Having an appearance and exhibiting qualities thought to be attractive to television viewers” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-E-L-E-G-E-N-I-C and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 25 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does telegenic mean?
adjective
- 1
Having an appearance and exhibiting qualities thought to be attractive to television viewers.
The young politician was very telegenic.
- 2
televisual
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce telegenic?
- /ˌtɛləˈd͡ʒɛnɪk/
Telegenic has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of telegenic
- more telegenic comparative
- most telegenic superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is telegenic?
Telegenic appears about once in every 25 million words in written English, the 152,206th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Telegenic in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense having an appearance and exhibiting qualities attractive to television viewers:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | télégénique |
| German | telegen |
| Spanish | televisual |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does telegenic come from?
From tele- + -genic, by analogy with photogenic.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).