Cute

The day of love is upon us once again! Every year, we get gypped into this commercial holiday of "love." Fantastic.

So, waking up in this romantic mood, I decided to do a post about a word that will probably be used by everyone today: cute. Cute, as defined by the AHD is "delightfully pretty or dainty . . . obviously contrived to charm . . . shrewd; clever." The last, and oldest, definition seems puzzling. How does cute go from shrewd or clever to warm-fuzzy feelings? It probably derived from years of clever ideas from sweethearts to their loved one. So the second definiton came into being. Cute senarios set up by charming men over many years produces warm-fuzzing feelings, and hence, the definition as we use it today was born.

But where does cute come from? The AHD says that it actually comes from acute, which means "keenly perceptive or discerning . . . reacting readily to stimuli or impressions . . . extremely sharp or sever; intense." Acute comes from Latin acutus, which is probably part of acuere "to sharpen." Ultimately, it came from the Latin word acus, which means "needle." So an acute person would set up a clever situation to snare his beloved.... What would this world do without love?