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 also minion and Dutch minnen (“to love”).
Adjective
mignon (comparative more mignon, superlative most mignon)
- Small and cute; pretty in a delicate way; dainty.
- 1867, Ouida, Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert, Volume II, Chapman and Hall (1867), 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.
- 1867, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ishmael, John and Robert Maxwell (1867), 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 (1899), 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, Marcin Barner, "Britz of Headquarters", The Branford Opinion, 29 September 1911:
- 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, Issues 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 Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (eds. Deniz Kandiyoti & Ayşe Saktanber), Rutgers University Press (2002), →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, […]
- 1867, Ouida, Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert, Volume II, Chapman and Hall (1867), page 194:
Noun
mignon (plural mignons)
- (historical) One of the court favourites of Henry III of France.
- 2003, Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, Harvard 2003, p. 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 2005, p. 220:
- Many commentators claimed hyperbolically that, because of their outrageous fashions, it was difficult to tell whether the mignons were male or female.
- 2003, Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, Harvard 2003, p. 330:
- (rare) A cute person; a pretty child.
French
Etymology
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 minnja (“love, care, affection, desire, memory”), Old Saxon minnea (“love”). More at mind.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /mi.ɲɔ̃/
audio (file)
Synonyms
Derived terms
Further reading
- “mignon” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).
Portuguese
Further reading
- "mignon" in Michaelis On-Line Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa (Michaelis Portuguese Language Brazilian Online Dictionary)