mignon

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See also: Mignon

English

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 Dutch minnen (to love). Doublet of minion.

Pronunciation

Adjective

mignon (comparative more mignon, superlative most mignon)

  1. Small and cute; pretty in a delicate way; dainty.
    • 1834, L E L, 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.
    • , [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

mignon (plural mignons)

  1. (rare, obsolete) A cute or pretty person; a dandy; a pretty child.
    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.”
  2. (historical) One of the court favourites of Henry III of France.
    • 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

French

Etymology

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

Adjective

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

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

Synonyms

Derived terms

Descendants

  • English: mignon
  • Italian: mignon
  • Portuguese: mignon
  • Turkish: minyon

Noun

mignon m (plural mignons)

  1. a small pastry

Further reading

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from French mignon.

Adjective

mignon (invariable)

  1. mignon (small and dainty)

Further reading

  • mignon in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from French mignon.

Pronunciation

 

Noun

mignon m (plural mignons)

  1. (Brazil) Clipping of filé mignon.

Adjective

mignon m or f (plural mignons or mignon)

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

Further reading

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French mignon.

Adjective

mignon m or n (feminine singular mignonă, masculine plural mignoni, feminine and neuter plural mignone)

  1. cute

Declension

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