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Cute as a Button

Posted by ESC on December 05, 2000

In Reply to: Cute as a Button posted by Noah Youn on December 05, 2000

: this saying is listed but I cant find the it. I also looked though this bulletin board and only found one entry, but doesnt really explain much. so if anyone can please help me find out what the meaning and orign of the saying "cute as a button" or at least how it came to use, it would be greatly appreciated.

This is all I know:

CUTE AS A BUTTON - "cute, charming, attractive, almost always with the connotation of being small, 1868 (from the original 1731 English meaning of 'acute' or clever). Cute as a bug's ear, 1930; cute as a bug in a rug, 1942; cute as a button, 1946. Cute and keen were two of the most overused slang words of the late 1920s and 1930s." From Listening to America: An Illustrated History of Words and Phrases from Our Lively and Splendid Past by Stuart Berg Flexner (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1992.)

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