[kyoot] 
adjective, cut⋅er, cut⋅est, adverb, noun | 1. | attractive, esp. in a dainty way; pleasingly pretty: a cute child; a cute little apartment. |
| 2. | affectedly or mincingly pretty or clever; precious: The child has acquired some intolerably cute mannerisms. |
| 3. | mentally keen; clever; shrewd. |
| 4. | Informal. in a cute, charming, or amusing way; cutely: In this type of movie the boy and girl always meet cute. |
| 5. | the cutes, Informal. self-consciously cute mannerisms or appeal; affected coyness: The young actress has a bad case of the cutes. |
| cute (kyōōt) adj. cut·er, cut·est
[Short for acute.] cute'ly adv., cute'ness n. Word History: Cute is a good example of how a shortened form of a word can take on a life of its own, developing a sense that dissociates it from the longer word from which it was derived. Cute was originally a shortened form of acute in the sense "keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd." In this sense cute is first recorded in a dictionary published in 1731. Probably cute came to be used as a term of approbation for things demonstrating acuteness, and so it went on to develop its own sense of "pretty, fetching," first recorded with reference to "gals" in 1838. |
