[Thought] Cute

[aileth]

Hello, 

This is my first entry here and I want to first say hi! to everyone in here. 

Well, I didn't know what to make of my journal, couldn't find a subject or anything. Most of my ideas were already somewhere else and it is rather frustrating not having anything to say. That said, I decided to put things as they come to my mind and make just a thoughts journal. 

Today I was reading Watashi no Suki na Hito and it gave me an idea I've had for a very long time, something I thought myself but never found an answer to. The word Kawaii in Japanese, or Cute or Nice in English, means so many things and so little at the same time. As far as I've seen them used, it means "something that is not unpleasant," because I've seen that said about many different things that they are cute or nice. The story I read was right, people usually use the word when they don't know what to say or they don't care really. I've used them myself many times because I couldn't convey what I meant and it was much easier to say something as abstract as that rather than think deeper. Absurd, I know, but true nontheless. Nice is a word that means something and nothing at the same time. It can be well intentioned, but mostly is just a polite word to say to someone in company and avoid any misunderstanding for good or for bad. Cute is used in the same way mostly but with a little difference. Cute is used mostly with girls or little children to convey the meaning of pleasing to the eye, which doesn't mean beauty in any way. 

To add to my understanding I looked them up in different dictionaries and this is what I found about them. First the niceties:

nice

1. Pleasing and agreeable in nature.
2. Having a pleasant or attractive appearance.

3. Exhibiting courtesy and politeness.

4. Of good character and reputation; respectable.

5. Overdelicate or fastidious; fussy.

6. Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle.

7. Done with delicacy and skill.

8. Used as an intensive with and: nice and warm.

9. Obsolete

a. Wanton; profligate: "For when mine hours/Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives/Of me for jests" Shakespeare.

b. Affectedly modest; coy: "Ere . . . /The nice Morn on th' Indian steep,/From her cabin'd loop-hole peep" John Milton.

[Middle English, foolish, from Old French, from Latin nescius, ignorant, from nescre, to be ignorant; see nescience.]

Most meanings are common and up to the point, but a couple of them are totally different. When have you considered that something nice is something made with great skill? Or that a nice person is someone fussy? 

Next comes cute, and is even more of a subject:

cute

1. Delightfully pretty or dainty; attractive especially by means of smallness or prettiness or quaintness.

2. Obviously contrived to charm; precious.

attractive - pleasing to the eye or mind especially through beauty or charm.

precious

3. Shrewd; clever. [Short for acute.]

cunning

artful - marked by skill in achieving a desired end especially with cunning or craft

Word History: Cute is a good example of how a shortened form of a word can take on a life of its own, developing a sense that dissociates it from the longer word from which it was derived. Cute was originally a shortened form of acute in the sense "keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd." In this sense cute is first recorded in a dictionary published in 1731. Probably cute came to be used as a term of approbation for things demonstrating acuteness, and so it went on to develop its own sense of "pretty, fetching," first recorded with reference to "gals" in 1838.

Cute wa cute janai! If we consider this word, then by all means Sakura from Tsubasa is really Cute! In every sense of this word. And the same goes for Tomoyo as well. And many I can't think of righ now.

I wonder if  kawaii has the same problem?

Well, one thing's for sure. It sure means that is nothing unpleasant at least ^-^ 

This are for sure, very Cute Words, in every sense of these words.