quaint

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Englisch

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

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”).

Adjective

quaint (comparative quainter, superlative quaintest)

  1. (obsolete) Of a person: cunning, crafty. [13th-19th c.]
    • 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI part 2:
      But you, my Lord, were glad to be imploy'd, / To shew how queint an Orator you are.
  2. (obsolete) Cleverly made; artfully contrived. [14th-19th c.]
    • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IX:
      describe races and games, / Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd shields, / Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, / Bases and tinsel trappings [...].
  3. (now dialectal) Strange or odd; unusual. [from 14th c.]
    • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.4:
      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 […].
    • 1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Canto Third. The Hostel, or Inn.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, […]; London: William Miller, and John Murray, →OCLC, stanza XX, page 153:
      Lord Gifford, deep beneath the ground, / Heard Alexander's bugle sound, / And tarried not his garb to change, / But, in his wizard habit strange, / Came forth, a quaint and fearful sight; [...]
    • 1924, Zeit, 17 Nov 1924:
      What none would dispute though many smiled over was the good-humored, necessary, yet quaint omission of the writer's name from the whole consideration.
  4. (obsolete) Overly discriminating or needlessly meticulous; fastidious; prim. [15th-19th c.]
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.7:
      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. [from 18th c.]
    • 1815, Jane Austen, Emma:
      I admire all that quaint, old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease; modern ease often disgusts me.
    • 2011, Ian Sample, The Guardian, 31 Jan 2011:
      The rock is a haven for rare wildlife, a landscape where pretty hedgerows and quaint villages are bordered by a breathtaking, craggy coastline.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

A variant of cunt (possibly as a pun).

Nomen

quaint (plural quaints)

  1. (archaic) The vulva. [from 14th c.]
    • c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Wife of Bath's Tale", Canterbury Tales:
      And trewely, as myne housbondes tolde me, / I hadde þe beste queynte þat myghte be.
    • 2003, Peter Ackroyd, The Clerkenwell Tales, p. 9:
      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.’

Anagrams

Middle English

Adjective

quaint

  1. (deprecated use of |lang= parameter) Alternative form of queynte
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