Steve from Fort Worth grew up hearing his mother from the English Midlands use cute to mean sly or shrewd, not adorable. That older sense is the original one, from acute, with the initial a lost by aphesis. The meaning shifted from keen or perceptive to apt or appealing, and then to attractive or adorable. The shrewd sense survives in pockets of the United States and the United Kingdom, and it’s still found in phrases like don’t get cute with me. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Cute” Comes from “Acute” and Once Meant Sharp or Shrewd”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. My name is Steve from Fort Worth.
Hi, Steve from Fort Worth.
And I have a question about the word cute. I’m English, as you can probably tell. My mother was from the Midlands in England, and she had a very different usage of the word cute. When my mother used it, she meant somebody was sly or shrewd, like a fox, and it was definitely not a compliment. And I was just wondering, I sort of have adopted that, and I will occasionally use it, but my mother and I are the only people that I know have ever used the word in that context. And I did look it up in the dictionary, and yes, there is a definition shrewd, but I’ve never heard of anybody else use it in that context. And I was just wondering, is it in usage, common usage in that context, or how was the transition made? What was the original usage as opposed to the modern usage, meaning that something is pleasant or attractive?
All good questions, Steve. All good questions. And there’s a bit of a story here. The usage that you and your mother have is old-fashioned, but it does exist in pockets here and there. By a huge amount, cute meaning adorable or attractive is the winning definition of cute these days. But it used to mean shrewd, and that actually is the original definition. Was shrewd or clever. And actually, it meant acute. And this is where we get the word. A-C-U-T-E was the original term. And through a process called aphesis, we dropped off the A and it just became cute. And it slowly changed over time and went from meaning perceptive or keen or shrewd to meaning on point or exactly what you want. And then it went from meaning exactly what you want to meaning something that was appealing and then something that was attractive. And here we get today where it means something just a little adorable. As the Japanese say, it’s kawaii, which has very cute little big eyes, big head, round cheeks.
Right.
So there it is in a nutshell. Crazy story of cute.
Okay. Do you know if it is in use?
It is. If other people do use it in various regions?
Absolutely. They absolutely do. You are not alone in this. It’s not common anymore, but you will find it in certain regions of the U.S. and the U.K. You’ve got to look carefully for it, though, because it’s the kind of thing once people realize that their use of it is out of fashion, they might kind of withdraw that use and only use it when they feel like they’re around people who also use it. I’ve heard people say, don’t get cute with me.
It’s a similar use, yeah. It’s a meaning of cleverness, yeah.
Yeah, so it’s like an acute angle, like a sharp angle.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay, well, thank you very much indeed. Great help. Cheers. Great information. Thank you.
Thanks for calling Steve.
Thank you, Steve. Take care now. Bye. Bye-bye.
Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send your stories about your close encounters with words to words@waywordradio.org.
