Cute

How to spell cute

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cute

What does cute mean?

1. adjectiveAttractive in a pretty, dainty, or endearing way.
2. adjectiveCleverly or annoyingly shrewd, often in a way meant to gain an advantage.

Cute in a sentence

• The puppy looked so cute asleep in its basket.

• The manager warned the salesman not to get cute with the numbers.

• She bought a cute little cottage near the coast.

• He tried a cute trick to avoid paying the full fare.

Where does cute come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Cute began life in the early 1700s as a clipped, casual form of 'acute', which came from the Latin acutus, the past participle of acuere 'to sharpen', itself from acus 'a needle'. In its earliest use cute meant 'keenly perceptive, clever, or shrewd', so a cute person was someone sharp-witted rather than adorable. Because writers felt it was a shortened word, it was often printed with an opening apostrophe as 'cute, a spelling reminder of the missing 'a' from acute. Over the 1800s, especially in American usage, the sense drifted from 'mentally sharp' toward 'attractive, dainty, and charming', which is now the dominant meaning. The original 'clever' sense survives in phrases like 'don't get cute with me', a faint echo of the word's sharper, acute beginnings.

How the word is built

• cute (aphetic shortening of acute, from Latin acutus 'sharpened, sharp')