Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

cute

/kjuːt/ adjective

Forms cuter cutest

  1. adjective Possessing physical features, behaviors, personality traits or other properties that are mainly attributed to infants and small or cuddly animals; e.g. fair, dainty, round, and soft physical features, disproportionately large eyes and head, playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity or shyness, innocence, affectionate behavior. “Our reaction to cute attributes is understood as the way nature ensures mammals care for their young.”
  2. adjective Lovable, charming, attractive or pleasing, especially in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way. “Let's go to the mall and look for cute girls.”
  3. adjective Sexually attractive or pleasing; gorgeous. “He's got such cute buns.”
  4. adjective Affected or contrived to charm; mincingly clever; precious; cutesy. “The actor's performance was too cute for me. All that mugging to the audience killed the humor.”
  5. adjective Mentally keen or discerning (See also acute) “Cute trick, but can you do it consistently?”
  6. adjective (especially mathematics) Evincing cleverness; surprising in its elegance or unconventionality (but of limited importance). “There's a cute alternative proof of this using lambda calculus.”

Synonyms

pretty clever shrewd having features mainly attributed to infants and small cuddly animals cunning precious

Etymology

Aphetic form of acute, originally meaning “keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd” (1731). Meaning transferred to “pretty, fetching” by US students (slang) c. 1834. Meaning drifted further to describe the pleasing attraction to features usually possessed by the young.

Webster’s 1913

  1. adjective Clever; sharp; shrewd; ingenious; cunning. [Colloq.]

Etymology [An abbrev. of acute.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “cute”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details