Cutest

How to spell cutest

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cutest

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cutest mean?

1. adjectiveMost attractive, charming, or endearingly pretty of a group.

Cutest in a sentence

• The shelter posted a photo of what visitors voted the cutest puppy.

• Of all the cottages they viewed, the one by the river was the cutest.

Where does cutest come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the superlative of 'cute', an adjective that began life as a clipped form of 'acute'. 'Acute' came into English from the Latin acutus, meaning 'sharpened' or 'pointed', the past participle of acuere 'to sharpen', which in turn was built on acus 'needle'. In the early 1700s English speakers trimmed the unstressed first syllable, and the resulting 'cute' first meant 'clever', 'keen', or 'shrewd', the way someone sharp-witted might be described. Only later, especially through American usage in the 1800s, did it drift toward 'attractive, charming, or endearingly pretty', the sense the superlative usually carries today. The spelling is regular: take 'cute', drop nothing, and add '-est', so the silent 'e' is simply absorbed before the ending.

How the word is built

• cute (from acute: sharp, clever)
• -est (superlative suffix)