Quaint

Quaint

Adjective · /kweɪnt/ · attractively unusual or old-fashioned; pleasingly curious

Definition

Quaint describes something that is attractively unusual, pleasingly old-fashioned, or charmingly curious — especially something that belongs to an earlier era and is valued for its small-scale, traditional, or handmade character rather than its efficiency or modernity. A quaint village has cobbled streets and low doorways. A quaint custom is one that feels sweetly out of step with the present age. The word almost always carries warmth: to call something quaint is to find it delightful precisely because of its difference from the ordinary modern world.

Origin

From Old French cointe, meaning clever, cunning, or elegant — itself from Latin cognitus, the past participle of cognoscere, to know. In Middle English, quaint meant clever, skilled, or cunningly made — a quaint device was an ingeniously crafted one. Over the centuries the word's sense drifted: from clever to curious, from curious to old-fashioned, and finally to attractively old-fashioned. The journey from cognitive Latin root to cosy English adjective is one of the language's more charming evolutions.