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Quaint
Definitions
- 1 Of a person: cunning, crafty. obsolete
"But you, my Lord, were glad to be imploy'd, / To shew how queint an Orator you are."
- 2 Cleverly made; artfully contrived. obsolete
"describe races and games, / Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd shields, / Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, / Bases and tinsel trappings […]."
- 3 Strange or odd; unusual. dialectal
"Till that there entered on the other side / A straunger knight, from whence no man could reed, / In quyent disguise, full hard to be descride […]."
- 4 Overly discriminating or needlessly meticulous; fastidious; prim. obsolete
"She, nothing quaint / Nor 'sdeignfull of so homely fashion, / Sith brought she was now to so hard constraint, / Sate downe upon the dusty ground anon […]."
- 5 Pleasingly unusual; especially, having old-fashioned charm.
"I admire all that quaint, old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease; modern ease often disgusts me."
- 1 strange in an interesting or pleasing way wordnet
- 2 very strange or unusual; odd or even incongruous in character or appearance wordnet
- 3 attractively old-fashioned (but not necessarily authentic) wordnet
- 1 The vulva. historical, obsolete
"The rest looked on, horrified, as Clarice trussed up her habit and in open view placed her hand within her queynte crying, ‘The first house of Sunday belongs to the sun, and the second to Venus.’"
Etymology
From Middle English queynte, quoynte, from Anglo-Norman cointe, queinte and Old French cointe (“pretty, clever, knowing”), from Latin cognitus, past participle of cognōscō (“I know”).
From Middle English queynte, quoynte, from Anglo-Norman cointe, queinte and Old French cointe (“pretty, clever, knowing”), from Latin cognitus, past participle of cognōscō (“I know”).
See also for "quaint"
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