cute

Aphetic form of acute, originally “keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd” (1731). Meaning transferred to “pretty, fetching” by US students (slang) c. 1834. Meaning drifted further to describe the pleasing attraction to features usually possessed by the young.

• IPA^(key): /kjuːt/, /kɪu̯t/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːt
• Homophone: Qt

cute (comparative cuter, superlative cutest)

1. Possessing physical features, behaviors, personality traits or other properties that are mainly attributed to infants and small or cuddly animals; e.g. fair, dainty, round, and soft physical features, disproportionately large eyes and head, playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity or shyness, innocence, affectionate behavior.

   Our reaction to cute attributes is understood as the way nature ensures mammals care for their young.

2. Lovable, charming, attractive or pleasing, especially in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way.

   Let's go to the mall and look for cute girls.

3. Sexually attractive or pleasing; gorgeous.

   He's got such cute buns.

   • 2010, Vernon J. Geberth, Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation, page 116:

     I ordered her to strip for me and made her wiggle her cute little ass as she took off her panties.

4. Affected or contrived to charm; mincingly clever; precious; cutesy.

   The actor's performance was too cute for me. All that mugging to the audience killed the humor.

   Don't get cute with me, boy!

   • 1957 May, William P. McGivern, Alfred Hitchcock's Suspense Magazine, page 102, column 2:

     "This time we aren't interested in anything cute or cryptic. We want the truth."

5. Mentally keen or discerning (See also acute)

   Synonyms: clever, shrewd

   • ca. 1850. Anonymous, "Turpin Hero" (broadside ballad, probably originally dating to 18th century)

     Then Turpin being so very cute,
     He hid his money in his boot.

   • 1908, Winston Churchill, Letter to his fianceé Clementine:

     'Filled with old doddering peers, cute financial magnates, clever wirepullers, big brewers with bulbous noses. All the enemies of progress are there — weaklings, sleek, slug, comfortable, self-important individuals.

   • 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:

     "The police are cute enough, of course, to choose either a Roman Catholic or a materialist as the magistrate."

   Cute trick, but can you do it consistently?

6. (especially mathematics) Evincing cleverness; surprising in its elegance or unconventionality (but of limited importance).

   There's a cute alternative proof of this using lambda calculus.

   • 1963, The Tablet‎, volume 217:

     Cute solution to pin one Knight by unpinning the other and so force discovered guard for the Bishop: it took me hours to find that Bishop key.

   • 2012, “Vertex neighborhoods, low conductance cuts, and good seeds for local community methods”, in Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining‎:

     We state a cute result that can be derived from our calcuations^[sic]. It is not applied anywhere later, but shows that graphs with heavy tails and large clustering coefficients have large cores.

Though all the above usages are understood outside the United States and Canada, they are rarely used spontaneously except to characterize or parody American usage.

• (having features mainly attributed to infants and small or cuddly animals): endearing
• (attractive or pleasing in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way): pretty

• → Armenian: քյութ (kʻyutʻ)
• → Dutch: kjoet

Borrowed from English cute.

cute

1. (youthful) cute, adorable
   • 2010, Kirsten Sonne Harild, Pony & Co. 4 - Lises forvandling, Gyldendal A/S, →ISBN:

     „De er sådan lidt tegneserieagtige, ikke? Ligesom shetlændere. Cute.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2010, Jesper Staunstrup, At være fremmed..., BoD – Books on Demand, →ISBN, page 187:

     Dyret er altså bare ikke cute... Det er en stor rottelignende dræber, der er altædende.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. (youthful) sweet, attractive (of a person, especially a prospective partner)
   • 2012, Hanne-Vibeke Holst, Hjertets renhed, Gyldendal A/S, →ISBN:

     Han er cute. Frederik var rimelig cute.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2014, Ina Bruhn, Maja og Dancer: Hestene på Ponygården 3, Rosinante & Co, →ISBN:

     Han hedder Elvin. Er det ikke et totalt cute navn?

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2014, Dennis Jürgensen, Hår(d), Tellerup A/S, →ISBN:

     Hun var cute, det var hun faktisk, og jeg prøvede desperat ikke at tænke på min isse.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2013, Anders Haahr Rasmussen, Modellen: #dayinthelife, Art People, →ISBN:

     Josephine Skriver har tidligere haft problemer med sit runde, cute ansigt og har det for så vidt stadigvæk.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• (adorable): nuttet, kær

Borrowed from Latin cutis.

• IPA^(key): /ˈku.te/
• Rhymes: -ute
• Hyphenation: cù‧te

cute f (plural cuti)

1. (anatomy) cutis, skin (of a person)

   Synonym: pelle

• cutaneo

cute

1. ablative singular of cutis

cute

1. Alternative form of cote (“coot”)

cute

1. locative singular masculine/neuter & accusative plural masculine & vocative singular feminine of cuta, which is past participle of cavati (“to die away from a world”)

Inherited from Latin cōtem, accusative of cōs. The expected result would have been *coate in Romanian, but may have been influenced by cuțit and ascuți.[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈku.te/
• Rhymes: -ute
• Hyphenation: cu‧te

cute f (plural cute)

1. whetstone

   Synonym: gresie