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  1. twee love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Chiefly British Overly precious or nice.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Same as étui. Planché, p. 183.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. UK, pejorative Overly quaint, dainty, cute or nice.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. affectedly dainty or refined

Etymologies

  1. From a childish pronunciation of sweet. The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use in 1905 in Punch. (Wiktionary)
  2. Alteration of tweet, baby-talk alteration of sweet. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “For example, when you are in babel's dutch language mode you can write twee "en in which" is a trema, which is not equivalent to twee\ "en, which is then (actually always) specifically an umlaut.”

    Netvouz - new bookmarks

  • “Yes, Juno's twee, and that's annoying, and no, twee is not the argument against that stupid flick that I want to push.”

    Why Juno Is Loathsome

  • “This audio labor of love for longtime friends Curt Kentner and Mark Rothkopf is built upon a deep-rooted love for the music-primarily anchored to the genre of indie pop, or the slightly less complimentary tag of "twee" - they've released over these past 10 years.”

    AltWeeklies.com Site Feed

  • “WARD: The English have a word, twee, which is hard to define, but once you've been exposed to it, you know it when you hear it.”

    NPR: The Best Of Apple Records' Albums: Beyond The Beatles

  • “Facing each other, marked out by enclosures of wires, keyboards, desks, assorted electronics, James Cargill and Trish Keenan begin building up a set of serious guile, the competent accretion of a decade's thoughtful knob twiddling and psychedelic exploration that has seen them move from what could almost be called a twee band, a mid-90s Warp oddity, to a fully fledged experimental outifit.”

    Drowned In Sound // Feed

  • “If they used to be called twee, they now ally their simple catchy pop with a power that sees them take on Ash on their own territory and win.”

    Artrocker

  • “Anyone with an allergy to what the British call twee might have started to itch about then.”

    NYT > Home Page

  • “And did you know, the word 'twee' in English, which means overly-cutesy, is the Dutch word for 'two'?”

    It's all Dutch to me!

  • “You can take a hipster out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the "twee" out of "tweed.”

    BSNYC Firday Fun Quiz!

  • “It's not an epic fantasy, but neither is it the kind of twee and fairy-riddled work the synopsis or its reputation as a 'woodland fantasy' suggests.”

    Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘twee’.

Comments

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  • alexz Elmer Fudd'ish for Tree
    Feb 19, 2013

  • crysb Twee-pop, a very happy genre of music indeed. Aug 9, 2009

  • wordlover42 love this word Jun 19, 2009

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‘twee’ has been looked up 5169 times, loved by 12 people, added to 88 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 7.