mignon

See also: Mignon

English

WOTD – 30 January 2013

WOTD – 30 January 2015

Etymology

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 also minion and Dutch minnen (“to love”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmɪnjɒn/, /ˈmɪnjɑ̃/
• (US) IPA^(key): /mɪnˈjɑn/

Adjective

mignon (comparative more mignon, superlative most mignon)

1. Small and cute; pretty in a delicate way; dainty.
   • 1867, Ouida, Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert, Volume II, Chapman and Hall (1867), 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.

   • 1867, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ishmael, John and Robert Maxwell (1867), 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 (1899), 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, Marcin Barner, "Britz of Headquarters", The Branford Opinion, 29 September 1911:

     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, Issues 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 Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (eds. Deniz Kandiyoti & Ayşe Saktanber), Rutgers University Press (2002), →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

mignon (plural mignons)

1. (historical) One of the court favourites of Henry III of France.
   • 2003, Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, Harvard 2003, p. 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 2005, p. 220:

     Many commentators claimed hyperbolically that, because of their outrageous fashions, it was difficult to tell whether the mignons were male or female.

2. (rare) A cute person; a pretty child.

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French

Etymology

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 minnja (“love, care, affection, desire, memory”), Old Saxon minnea (“love”). More at mind.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mi.ɲɔ̃/

• audio

  (file)

Adjective

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

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

Synonyms

• joli

Derived terms

• filet mignon

Noun

mignon m (plural mignons)

1. a small pastry

Further reading

• “mignon” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

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Italian

Etymology

French

Adjective

mignon (invariable)

1. mignon (small and dainty)

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Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from French mignon.

Noun

mignon m (plural mignons)

1. Clipping of filé mignon.

Adjective

mignon (plural, comparable)

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

Further reading

• "mignon" in Michaelis On-Line Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa (Michaelis Portuguese Language Brazilian Online Dictionary)