mignon

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See also: Mignon

English

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Etymology

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From French mignon, from Middle French mignon (lover, darling, favourite), from Old French mignon (dainty, pleasing, gentle, kind), from Frankish *minnjo (love, friendship, affection, memory), from Proto-Germanic *minþijō, *mindijō (affectionate thought, care), from Proto-Indo-European *men-, *mnā- (to think). Cognate with Old High German minnja (love, care, affection, desire, memory), Old Saxon minnea (love). More at mind. Compare Dutch minnen (to love). Doublet of minion.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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mignon (comparative more mignon, superlative most mignon)

  1. Small and cute; pretty in a delicate way; dainty.
    • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XI, in Francesca Carrara. [], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, [], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 127:
      "Will you not wear these to-morrow?" said the King, offering one pair to Madame de Merœur; then, turning to her sister, he added, "I only hope yours are small enough for those mignon hands."
    • 1867, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], “Cigarette en Condottiera”, in Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert. [], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, [], →OCLC, page 194:
      It was the deep-blue, dreaming, haughty eyes of "Miladi" that he was bringing back to memory, not the brown mignon face that had been so late close to his in the light of the moon.
    • [1884], [Mary Elizabeth Braddon], “‘And it brought forth Wild Grapes’”, in Ishmael: [], volume II, London: John and Robert Maxwell, [], →OCLC, page 119:
      Or failing that, it must be sweet to be a famous beauty, a golden-haired divinity, like that fashionable enchantress whom she had seen often on the boulevards and in the Champs-Elysées—a mignon face, a figure delicate to fragility, almost buried amidst the luxury of a matchless set of sables, seated in the lightest and most elegant of victorias, behind a pair of thoroughbred blacks.
    • 1899, Paul Leicester Ford, Janice Meredith: A Story of the American Revolution, volume 1, Dodd, Mead & Company, page 64:
      What she looked at was an unset miniature of a young girl, with a wealth of darkest brown hair, powdered to a gray, and a little straight nose with just a suggestion of a tilt to it, giving the mignon face an expression of pride that the rest of the countenance by no means aided.
    • 1911 September 29, Marcin Barner, “Britz of Headquarters”, in The Branford Opinion:
      Exactly what my grandfather says," Dorothy retorted, fun flashing in that mignon face.
    • 1987, Persistence of Vision: The Journal of the Film Faculty of the City University of New York, numbers 5-8, page 68:
      Starting a dance can be as fortuitous as its termination: a very short, mignon girl asks a tall guy to dance with her, then drops him a moment later without a word.
    • 2002, Seçil Büker, “The Film Does not End with an Ecstatic Kiss”, in Deniz Kandiyoti, Ayşe Saktanber, editors, Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey, Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 161:
      Magazines dubbed her 'a girl for the salons', 'the pretty girl' of the Turkish cinema, perfectly suited to the role of a blonde, mignon girl who had been educated at the best schools. In later years she herself would say, 'I was cute and sweet, but unable to project the image of a sexy woman, []

Noun

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mignon (plural mignons)

  1. (rare, obsolete) A cute or pretty person; a dandy; a pretty child. [18th–19th c.]
    • 1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt, published 2008, page 264:
      “I wish the blow he dealt to that fine essenced mignon had beat his brains out.”
  2. (historical) One of the court favourites of Henry III of France. [from 20th c.]
    • 2003, Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, Harvard, published 2003, page 330:
      When the mignons, barefoot and clad in sacks with holes for their heads and feet, marched with Henry in a penitential procession, lashing their backs, one wit opined that they should have aimed their blows lower.
    • 2005, Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, University of Chicago, published 2005, page 220:
      Many commentators claimed hyperbolically that, because of their outrageous fashions, it was difficult to tell whether the mignons were male or female.

Anagrams

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French

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Etymology

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Inherited from Middle French mignon, from Old French mignon (dainty, pleasing, gentle, kind), from Frankish *minnjo (love, friendship, affection, memory), from Proto-Germanic *minþijō, *mindijō (affectionate thought, care), from Proto-Indo-European *men-, *mnā- (to think). Cognate with Old High German minna (love, care, affection, desire, memory), Old Saxon minnia (love), Old Dutch minna (Dutch min). More at mind.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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mignon (feminine mignonne, masculine plural mignons, feminine plural mignonnes)

  1. cute (of a baby, an animal, etc.)
  2. cute (sexually attractive)

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • English: mignon
  • Italian: mignon
  • Portuguese: mignon
  • Turkish: minyon

Noun

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mignon m (plural mignons)

  1. a small pastry

Further reading

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Italian

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French mignon.

Adjective

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mignon (invariable)

  1. mignon (small and dainty)

Further reading

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  • mignon in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Portuguese

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French mignon.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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mignon m (plural mignons)

  1. (Brazil) Clipping of filé mignon.

Adjective

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mignon m or f (plural mignons or mignon)

  1. (Brazil) mignon (small and dainty)
  2. (Brazil, slang) cute (sexually attractive)

Further reading

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Romanian

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French mignon.

Adjective

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mignon m or n (feminine singular mignonă, masculine plural mignoni, feminine and neuter plural mignone)

  1. cute

Declension

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