cute
/kjuːt
/adjective
1Attractive in a pretty or endearing way: she had a cute little nose...
- And I haven't had any luck attracting cute little kittens to the window.
- Attractive subjects are cute animals, pretty women, nice landscapes, interesting portraits.
- Her sweet voice and cute, large eyes attracted most people.
Synonyms
endearing, adorable, lovable, sweet, lovely, appealing, engaging, delightful, dear, darling, winning, winsome, charming, enchanting;
attractive, pretty, as pretty as a picture;
chocolate-box;
Scottish & Northern English bonny
informal cutesy, dinky, twee, pretty-pretty, adorbs
1.1North American informal Sexually attractive; good-looking: Ryan’s cute but he’s kinda young a cute guy...
- Benatar had a rough-hewn sexuality; John was coquettish and irksomely cute.
- In addition to that, he's funny, cute, pretty sweet, and has a killer body.
- This sophisticated giant oozes sex appeal as well as being cute and pretty, perfect for a woman like me.
2North American informal Clever or cunning, especially in a self-seeking or superficial way: she had a real cute idea the two brothers were cute enough to find a couple of rich women and marry them...
- The first time I heard about the Slow Food movement, recently arrived on our shores from its native Italy, I thought the whole idea sounded cute.
- Once Slatkin stepped a bit on the pedal, it worked out very nicely and the trumpet call from the wings was at least a cute idea.
- But, you know, my mom and my dad told me about this show, and I just thought it was such a cute idea.
Derivatives
cutely
/ adverb ...- The two girls were fair, round-faced, bare-legged and smiling cutely, the boys (her youngest brother still a baby) darker and grinning.
- Shia LaBeouf plays Stanley Yelnats, a boy with a cutely palindromic name sent to a bizarrely tough reformatory called Camp Green Lake, after being wrongly convicted of stealing a pair of sneakers.
- Most Crikey readers would have seen the 7: 30 Report last night on what it so cutely called ‘targeted largesse’.
Origin
Early 18th century (in the sense 'clever, shrewd'): shortening of acute.
This started out in the 18th century as a shortened form of acute (see accent) and originally meant ‘clever or shrewd’. The sense ‘attractive or pretty’ dates from late 19th-century America. Cutesy, meaning ‘cute in a sickly or sentimental way’, is also American, and was first recorded in 1914.