Paula from Palm City, Florida, wants to know: What’s so cute about buttons, anyway? Like the expressions cute as a bug and cute as a bug’s ear, this one seems to derive from cute meaning delicate and small. She raises another interesting question: Are the descriptors beautiful and attractive preferable to cute and adorable after a certain age? We want to hear your thoughts! This is part of a complete episode.
Leave a comment
3 comments
More from this show
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
My wife to either child: “You’re cute as a button."
Child’s reply: “Are buttons cute?"
Wife: “They are when they look like you."
Child rolls eyes.
Paula indicated that she thought “Cute as a button" should not be applied to anyone past teenage. I think it only applies to toddlers and babies. At least that’s the way my father used it, and he wasn’t much for sayings. As the previous poster implies, it shouldn’t be applied to anyone old enough to be sarcastic.
Helen Mirren may not be cute as a button, but Celia Imrie is.