cutie
n.— «I would have to say that Robinson was the best I fought—a cutie, fast, with all the tricks, but he could also take a punch and he could throw one.» —by Jake La Motta Raging Bull: My Story , 1970. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Michelle in Williamsburg, Virginia, wonders about the origin of alley-oop!, which she says when hoisting her toddler. It’s from French allez, the imperative of aller meaning “to go” and houp or hop, an onomatopoeic utterance made...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...