cute
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cute", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "cute" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "cute" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cute is anEnglishadj. It means: 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 featur... Pronounced /kjuːt/. It ranks #2,249 in English word frequency. Often confused with cuz and cuts.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cute |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /kjuːt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,249 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cute is 4 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kjuːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,249 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for cute, with forms such as "ccute", "ctue", and "cuet". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "cuz", "cuts", "cutie", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 b… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is cute, spelled C-U-T-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Possessing 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.
- 2Lovable, charming, attractive or pleasing, especially in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way.
- 3Sexually attractive or pleasing; gorgeous.
- 4Affected or contrived to charm; mincingly clever; precious; cutesy.
- 5Mentally keen or discerning (See also acute)
- 6Evincing cleverness; surprising in its elegance or unconventionality (but of limited importance).
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.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccute,ctue,cuet,cutte,ucte
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for cute
Misspelling Variants of "cute"
Frequency rank: #2,249 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: