| 词组 | cute |
| 释义 | cute Cute came about as an 18th-century shortening of acute. Used in this sense, it has often been printed or written with a preceding apostrophe: • Mr. Snow struggles gamely to be objective, but can be held to have succeeded only on the assumption that every Chinese who follows Lenin is 'cute, hilarious and indomitable —Times Literary Supp., 23 Oct. 1937 • Mrs. Piozzi wrinkled her nose at the expression in her synonym book of 1794, ascribing it to "coarse people" and "low Londoners." Early-20th-century commentators—Vizetelly 1906, for instance—more or less repeated Mrs. Piozzi's disapproval. In the meantime, 19th-century America had added a new meaning—"attractive or pretty especially in a dainty or delicate way." It is presumably this meaning that inspired the following remark: • The reviewer will also ever pray in the interest of the English language ... that the word "cute" be banished from the pages of serious literature —The Nation, 22 Apr. 1909 Of course it was not: • Cute four-room California bungalow —Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, 1922 • Individual, cute, blue paper-baskets stuffed with salted almonds were beside each plate —Carl Van Vechten, The Tattooed Countess, 1924 • After a while she brought the pants, and they were cute little things — New Yorker, 28 Aug. 1926 • Emily Post in 1927 laid the use under a mild ban—she termed it "provincial," which was her label for some of the more venial linguistic sins. Some handbooks (Prentice Hall 1978, Macmillan 1982, for instance) are still repeating the opinions of The Nation's reviewer and Emily Post. In the 20th century, cute further developed a disparaging sense: • It is a disconcerting experience to revisit a play that once appeared wonderfully brilliant and original and to discover ... that considerable sections of it now seem alarmingly cute —Wolcott Gibbs, New Yorker, 27 Aug. 1955 • ... a ranch-style home with Early American maple, nautical brasswork and muslin curtains; just too cute for words —Christopher Isherwood, The World in the Evening, 1952 • When it is not embarrassingly cute, it is blatantly idiotic —Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Saturday Rev., August 1979 No one has condemned this use. We don't think you have to worry much about any of these uses. The second sense—"attractive, pretty"—is still used mostly in speech, real or fictional, and in informal writing: • ... there was my Liebfraumilch (well-named) and the cute bottle of beer, too —Randall Jarrell, letter, 6 May 1952 • "... Oh, don't worry; you know Chauncy wouldn't fix you up with a dog or anything—he's probably very acceptably cute." —Shylah Boyd, American Made, 1975 |
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