quaint

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“
Despite what critics have called his quaint, old-world, idiosyncratic, even "Christian" attitude, Solzhenitsyn cannot be accused of not addressing the most important problems of his lifetime.

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Definitions (16)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Charmingly odd, especially in an old-fashioned way: "Sarah Orne Jewett . . . was dismissed by one critic as merely a New England old maid who wrote quaint, plotless sketches of late 19th-century coastal Maine” (James McManus).
  2. adjective Unfamiliar or unusual in character; strange: quaint dialect words. See Synonyms at strange.
  3. adjective Cleverly made; artful.

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Examples (50)

  • It needed an effort to recall her quaint, vivacious talk of an hour ago, now that she sat looking vaguely at the table before her, and uttering occasionally a blank monosyllable in reply to the discourse that Mr. Scheffer poured into her ear. —  Magazine - Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine - 2007 - Issue 03 - March
  • Susan Fox: The founder of the once-quaint, now-booming Park Slope Parents Web site has emerged as a force throughout the borough. —  The Brooklyn Paper: Full articles
  • The starting rate is even cheaper at the Aston Maui Lu, although some might argue it should be even less, given that the resort is overdue for a renovation (its Web site describes it as "quaint -- old style Hawaiian atmosphere," which is a gentle way of putting it.) —  SFGate: Top News Stories
  • The shorts he'll be showcasing this week have a personal, ramshackle quality that's charmingly quaint -- many of the ones made in the '90s look like they were shot in the' 60s -- and the features he'll be selling are marred by amateur acting and pedestrian scripts. —  Baltimore City Paper
  • The first steel helmets had just arrived--quaint, antique, Japanese looking things, with ingenious corrugations to catch the bullets--and were issued to the Machine Gunners, who had also received the first supply of the new Box Respirator, issued in place of the Smoke Helmet. —  The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 History of the 1/8th Battalion
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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, clever, cunning, peculiar, from Old French queinte, cointe, from Latin cognitus, past participle of cognōscere, to learn; see cognition.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. Early modern English also queint; dial. (Scots) quent; from Middle English quaint, quaynt, qwhainte, queint, queynt, quoint, coint, koint, from Old French coint, coynt, coinct, coente, cuinte, quoint, queint, quuint, quieynt, well-known, brave, wise, clever, quaint, = Provencal conte, cointe = Italian conto, known, noted, also pretty, contr. of cognito, known, from Latin cognitus, known: see cognizance, cognize, etc. The somewhat remarkable development of senses (which took place in Old French) is partly paralleled by that of couth, known, with its negative uncouth, and by that of Anglo-Saxon mǣre, known, famous, etc. (see mere); but some confusion with L. comptus (later Italian conto), neat, and with computatus (later Italian conto, counted, numbered, etc.) is prob. also involved: see compt. Cf. quaint, v., and acquaint, etc.
  2. Middle English quainte, queynte, etc.; from quaint, adjective
  3. from Middle English quainten, queinten, queynten, cointen; by apheresis from aquainten, etc.: see acquaint.
 

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/kweɪnt/
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