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cutely

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cute  (kyt)
adj. cut·er, cut·est
1. Delightfully pretty or dainty.
2. Obviously contrived to charm; precious: "[He] mugs so ferociously he kills the humorit's an insufferably cute performance" David Ansen.
3. Shrewd; clever.

[Short for acute.]

cutely adv.
cuteness n.
Word History: Cute is a good example of how a shortened form of a word can take on a life of its own, developing a sense that dissociates it from the longer word from which it was derived. Cute was originally a shortened form of acute in the sense "keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd." In this sense cute is first recorded in a dictionary published in 1731. Probably cute came to be used as a term of approbation for things demonstrating acuteness, and so it went on to develop its own sense of "pretty, fetching," first recorded with reference to "gals" in 1838.
ThesaurusLegend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Adv.1.cutely - in an attractive manner; "how cunningly the olive-green dress with its underskirt of rose-brocade fitted her perfect figure"

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Cutely drawn characters against a candy-colored setting sharply contrast with the overall themes of this darkly humorous book.
You see, the other key witch of the musical ``Wicked'' - the one without the green skin - has this highly irritating habit of mangling words cutely.
His work does not seem caught up in neo-expressionist tendencies nor in the abundance of cutely exuberant cartooning in contemporary painting; rather, it feels born of a deep curiosity about what happens when straight-up painterly and representational concerns commingle.
 
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