Quaintrelle
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A woman who is focused on style and leisurely pastimes. archaic, rare
"It folweth nouht that thouh j be thus kembt and a litel make the queyntrelle that for swich cause j am fair"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"It folweth nouht that thouh j be thus kembt and a litel make the queyntrelle that for swich cause j am fair"
Etymology
Borrowed from Late Middle English queyntrelle (“person of fashion”), from Middle French cointerelle, from Middle French cointerel (“vain”) + -elle, -ele (suffix forming feminine diminutive nouns), possibly influenced by quaint. Cointerel is derived from cointe (“clever, intelligent; quaint”), from Latin cognitus (“known, recognized; acknowledged, noted”), the perfect passive participle of cōgnōscō (“to be acquainted (with), recognize; to learn; to know”), from con- (prefix meaning ‘with’) + (g)nōscō (“to know, recognize”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (“to know”) + *-sḱéti (suffix forming durative or iterative imperfective verbs from roots)).
More for "quaintrelle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.