Putto
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A representation, especially in Renaissance or Baroque art, of a small, naked, often winged (usually male) child; a cherub.
"There is in the porch of the present church a tablet to Luke Flood (died 1818) which has much the appearance of having been made up of portions of earlier monuments. It is surmounted by a bas-relief of a winged boy holding an inverted torch. But not only is he a baby putto, not a youth, and without an urn, but the style and execution scarcely seem worthy of [Thomas] Banks even when not at his best."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"There is in the porch of the present church a tablet to Luke Flood (died 1818) which has much the appearance of having been made up of portions of earlier monuments. It is surmounted by a bas-relief of a winged boy holding an inverted torch. But not only is he a baby putto, not a youth, and without an urn, but the style and execution scarcely seem worthy of [Thomas] Banks even when not at his best."
Etymology
Borrowed from Italian putto (“cupid, putto; boy”), from Latin putus (“boy”), a variant of pūsus (“(little) boy”), from puer (“boy, lad; child”), from Proto-Italic *puweros, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, little; smallness”). The plural form putti is also borrowed from Italian putti.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.