mignon
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]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
[edit]- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈmɪnjɒn/, /ˈmɪnjɑ̃/
- (US) IPA(key): /mɪnˈjɑn/
Audio (General Australian): (file) - Rhymes: (UK) -ɒn, (US) -ɑn
Adjective
[edit]mignon (comparative more mignon, superlative most mignon)
- 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
[edit]mignon (plural mignons)
- (rare, obsolete) A cute or pretty person; a dandy; a pretty child. [18th–19th c.]
- Synonyms: exquisite, fopling; see also Thesaurus:dandy
- 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.”
- (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
[edit]French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]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
[edit]Adjective
[edit]mignon (feminine mignonne, masculine plural mignons, feminine plural mignonnes)
Synonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]Noun
[edit]mignon m (plural mignons)
- a small pastry
Further reading
[edit]- “mignon”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Italian
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adjective
[edit]mignon (invariable)
- mignon (small and dainty)
Further reading
[edit]- mignon in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana
Portuguese
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]
Noun
[edit]mignon m (plural mignons)
- (Brazil) Clipping of filé mignon.
Adjective
[edit]mignon m or f (plural mignons or mignon)
Further reading
[edit]- “mignon”, in Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), São Paulo: Editora Melhoramentos, 2015–2024
Romanian
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Adjective
[edit]mignon m or n (feminine singular mignonă, masculine plural mignoni, feminine and neuter plural mignone)
Declension
[edit]singular | plural | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
masculine | neuter | feminine | masculine | neuter | feminine | |||
nominative- accusative |
indefinite | mignon | mignonă | mignoni | mignone | |||
definite | mignonul | mignona | mignonii | mignonele | ||||
genitive- dative |
indefinite | mignon | mignone | mignoni | mignone | |||
definite | mignonului | mignonei | mignonilor | mignonelor |
- English terms borrowed from French
- English terms derived from French
- English terms derived from Middle French
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Frankish
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
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- English doublets
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- Rhymes:English/ɒn
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- Rhymes:English/ɑn/2 syllables
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- French terms inherited from Middle French
- French terms derived from Middle French
- French terms inherited from Old French
- French terms derived from Old French
- French terms derived from Frankish
- French terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- French terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- French 2-syllable words
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- fr:Appearance
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