cute
Possessing physical features, behaviors, personality traits or other properties that are mainly attributed to infants and small or cuddly animals; e.g. fair, dainty, round, and soft physical features, disproportionately large eyes and head, playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity or shyness, innocence, affectionate behavior.
Adjective 3 meanings
Possessing physical features, behaviors, personality traits or other properties that are mainly attributed to infants and small or cuddly animals; e.g. fair, dainty, round, and soft physical features, disproportionately large eyes and head, playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity or shyness, innocence, affectionate behavior.
“Our reaction to cute attributes is understood as the way nature ensures mammals care for their young.”
Lovable, charming, attractive or pleasing, especially in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way.
“Let's go to the mall and look for cute girls.”
Affected or contrived to charm; mincingly clever; precious; cutesy.
“The actor's performance was too cute for me. All that mugging to the audience killed the humor.”
Etymology
Aphetic form of acute, originally meaning “keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd” (1731). Meaning transferred to “pretty, fetching” by US students (slang) c. 1834. Meaning drifted further to describe the pleasing attraction to features usually possessed by the young.
Similar and opposite words
CUTE at a glance
CUTE has 4 letters and scores 6 points in Scrabble (C 3 + U 1 + T 1 + E 1) and 8 in Words With Friends, before board bonuses. It ranks #2,194 by how often it appears in everyday English. It is valid in ENABLE, NWL2023, Collins/SOWPODS.
Rhymes with cute
All rhymesOne letter away
- CUTS6
- CURE6
- CUBE8
- CITE6
- MUTE6
- CATE6
- COTE6
- LUTE4
- BUTE6
- JUTE11
- CUKE10
- CETE6
- CYTE9
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