Following up on our conversation about euphemistic ways to talk about one’s age, Gene from Greenwood, Indiana, reports that his mother-in-law prefers the phrase I’m at that cute age. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Billy from Chilmark, Massachusetts, has heard cunning used for a pretty or especially cute baby, a sense that turns up mostly in the Northeast. The adjective originally had to do with knowing or skill, from the same old root as know, back when...
“May a mouse eat you,” or in Persian, moosh bokharadet, is a term of endearment suggesting the recipient is small and cute. Another picturesque hypocorism: French mon petit chou, “sweetheart,” but literally, “my little...
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...
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...
In the film industry, the expression meet cute refers to “an overly precious first encounter between the romantic leads.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Meet Cute” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this...