Crossword clues for quaint
quaint
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Quaint \Quaint\, a. [OE. queint, queynte, coint, prudent, wise, cunning, pretty, odd, OF. cointe cultivated, amiable, agreeable, neat, fr. L. cognitus known, p. p. of cognoscere to know; con + noscere (for gnoscere) to know. See Know, and cf. Acquaint, Cognition.]
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Prudent; wise; hence, crafty; artful; wily. [Obs.]
Clerks be full subtle and full quaint.
--Chaucer. -
Characterized by ingenuity or art; finely fashioned; skillfully wrought; elegant; graceful; nice; neat. [Archaic] `` The queynte ring.'' `` His queynte spear.''
--Chaucer. `` A shepherd young quaint.''
--Chapman.Every look was coy and wondrous quaint.
--Spenser.To show bow quaint an orator you are.
--Shak. -
Curious and fanciful; affected; odd; whimsical; antique; archaic; singular; unusual; as, quaint architecture; a quaint expression.
Some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry.
--Macaulay.An old, long-faced, long-bodied servant in quaint livery.
--W. Irving.Syn: Quaint, Odd, Antique.
Usage: Antique is applied to that which has come down from the ancients, or which is made to imitate some ancient work of art. Odd implies disharmony, incongruity, or unevenness. An odd thing or person is an exception to general rules of calculation and procedure, or expectation and common experience. In the current use of quaint, the two ideas of odd and antique are combined, and the word is commonly applied to that which is pleasing by reason of both these qualities. Thus, we speak of the quaint architecture of many old buildings in London; or a quaint expression, uniting at once the antique and the fanciful.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1200, cointe, "cunning, ingenious; proud," from Old French cointe "knowledgeable, well-informed; clever; arrogant, proud; elegant, gracious," from Latin cognitus "known, approved," past participle of cognoscere "get or come to know well" (see cognizance). Modern spelling is from early 14c.\n
\nLater in English, "elaborate, skillfully made" (c.1300); "strange and clever" (mid-14c.). Sense of "old-fashioned but charming" is first attested 1795, and could describe the word itself, which had become rare after c.1700 (though it soon recovered popularity in this secondary sense). Related: Quaintly; quaintness.
Wiktionary
Etymology 1 a. 1 (context obsolete English) Of a person: cunning, crafty. (13th-19th c.) 2 (context obsolete English) Cleverly made; artfully contrived. (14th-19th c.) 3 (context now dialectal English) Strange or odd; unusual. (from 14th c.) 4 (context obsolete English) Overly discriminating or needlessly meticulous; fastidious; prim. (15th-19th c.) 5 Pleasingly unusual; especially, having old-fashioned charm. (from 18th c.) Etymology 2
n. (context archaic English) The vulva. (from 14th c.)
WordNet
adj. strange in an interesting or pleasing way; "quaint dialect words"; "quaint streets of New Orleans, that most foreign of American cities"
very strange or unusual; odd or even incongruous in character or appearance; "the head terminating in the quaint duck bill which gives the animal its vernacular name"- Bill Beatty; "came forth a quaint and fearful sight"- Sir Walter Scott; "a quaint sense of humor"
attractively old-fashioned (but not necessarily authentic); "houses with quaint thatched roofs"; "a vaulted roof supporting old-time chimney pots" [syn: old-time, olde worlde]
Wikipedia
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Usage examples of "quaint".
The slums had appeared houses of moderate affluence and very quaint, some even beautiful.
Only a superficial view could attach importance to words, phrases, even vocabularies, or to quaint social customs that the receiving race may adopt from the newcomers in the process of assimilating them.
More ballad-concerts, more quaint English, more robustious barytone songs, more piecemeal pictures, more colonial poetry, more young nations with withered traditions.
He stood, a quaint, impassive little figure, more interested apparently in de Batz, who was a stranger to him, than in the three others whom he knew.
The flesh was weary, the spirit faint, and I was getting out of humor with the bustling busy throng through which I had to struggle, when in a fit of desperation I tore my way through the crowd, plunged into a by-lane, and, after passing through several obscure nooks and angles, emerged into a quaint and quiet court with a grassplot in the centre overhung by elms, and kept perpetually fresh and green by a fountain with its sparkling jet of water.
It had a quaint sound to it, Maro thought, a pre-space feeling that went along with colorful costumes and riding on beasts or under steam or fossil power.
The Mazurs are musically a highly gifted nation, and Chopin was impressed early in life with the quaint originality of their melodies.
The quaint part of it was that some of its prohibitions, carried to their logical extreme, had curiously overleaped their mark.
For the old village church, surrounded with its quaint tombs and overshadowing pines, he had a love that seemed about to call forth the response of personality from things inanimate.
It was a sort of boudoir or dressing-room, with a few pretty old portraits and miniatures, and a number of Louis Quatorze looking-glasses hung round, and such pretty quaint cabriole gilt and pale green furniture.
Her idea of God had been first defined by the sight of a quaint French picture of the Creation,--an engraving which represented a shoreless sea under a black sky, and out of the blackness a solemn and bearded gray head emerging, and a cloudy hand through which stars glimmered.
It is a quaint and lovely mountain town, of tenderly preserved Spanish Colonial architecture, cobbled streets, perpetual springtime, thornless roses and stingless bees, crystalline air, hummingbirds, butterflies and flowers, flowers everywhere.
Huge oars like golden fins projected from her sides and dipped lazily every now and then, apparently wielded by the hands of invisible rowers, whose united voices supplied the lack of the needful wind,--and as he caught sight of this cumbrously quaint galley, Theos, moved by sudden interest, elbowed his way resolutely though the dense crowd till he gained the edge of the embankment, where leaning against the marble balustrade, he watched with a curious fascination its gradual advance.
Also on the right-hand side of this surface of the sherd, painted obliquely in red on the space not covered by the uncial characters, and signed in blue paint, was the following quaint inscription:-- IN EARTH AND SKIE AND SEA STRANGE THYNGES THER BE.
He was a quaint little figure in his black, unclerical suit, and the warm cloth cap of a like hue drawn carefully over a wide expanse of baldness which Nature had imposed upon him.