QUAINT • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Quaint

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adjective

Quaint adj.

1.

Prudent; wise; hence, crafty; artful; wily. (Obs.) "Clerks be full subtle and full quaint."

2.

Characterized by ingenuity or art; finely fashioned; skillfully wrought; elegant; graceful; nice; neat. (Archaic) " The queynte ring." " His queynte spear." " A shepherd young quaint." "Every look was coy and wondrous quaint." "To show bow quaint an orator you are."

3.

Curious and fanciful; affected; odd; whimsical; antique; archaic; singular; unusual; as, quaint architecture; a quaint expression. "Some stroke of quaint yet simple pleasantry." "An old, long-faced, long-bodied servant in quaint livery."

Synonyms: Quaint, Odd, Antique. Antique is applied to that which has come down from the ancients, or which is made to imitate some ancient work of art. Odd implies disharmony, incongruity, or unevenness. An odd thing or person is an exception to general rules of calculation and procedure, or expectation and common experience. In the current use of quaint, the two ideas of odd and antique are combined, and the word is commonly applied to that which is pleasing by reason of both these qualities. Thus, we speak of the quaint architecture of many old buildings in London; or a quaint expression, uniting at once the antique and the fanciful.

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Etymology of 'Quaint'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Quaint" Quotes from Famous Books

... breaking-point, was not perhaps normally so intense as it is to-day; yet there was certainly much oppression and unnecessary hardships to be suffered by the weak, even in that age. The Ancren Riwle, that quaint form of life for ankeresses drawn up by a Dominican in the thirteenth century, shows that even then, despite the distance of years and the passing of so many generations, the manners and ways and mental attitudes of people depended very much as to whether they were among ...

— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... reader will wish to know, are these men really so dangerous, and have the business men of America been driven to treat them as here described. The reader may again address the I. W. W. National Headquarters for a four-page leaflet with the quaint title, "With Drops of Blood the History of the Industrial Workers of the World has Been Written." Despite the fact that it is a bare record of cases, there are many men serving long terms in prison in the United States for ...

— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... Loder's paramount emotion was one of envy for the mistress of Greenriver. She used to think, as she came into the house each morning, that it would have suited her much better, as a background, than it would ever suit the quaint, childish-looking Toni; and it grew almost unendurable to her to have to sit at the luncheon table as a guest—not even that—and watch Toni's ridiculous assumption of dignity as she sat in her high-backed chair opposite ...

— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... smile, are neat and trim in white duck, while their women walk a step or two behind them, in native dress, with a baby on their backs. The Japanese children, in bright coloured frocks, their little heads shaven, look like quaint dolls. Then there are the Chinese. The men, fat and prosperous, wear their American clothes oddly, but the women are enchanting with their tightly-dressed black hair, so neat that you feel it can never be ...

— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... from me but my own pride. I could even see with distinctness those who trod it, not only the saints of far-off days, but men like Father Dolling, and women whose pale intense faces met mine from beneath the quaint ugliness of Salvation Army bonnets. These soldiers of the League of Service moved everywhere around me in the incessant processions of a tireless love. I knew their works, and there was no hour when my heart did not go out to them in sympathy. Why was it that ...

— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson

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