Talk:cunning
I and my family have lived in New England for generations. Cunnin is definitely an "Old Yankee" word for adorable. So put it back.—This unsigned comment was added by 68.109.28.69 (talk • contribs) 14:47, 24 January 2013 (UTC).
- If you look at the entry, you'll see that it's already back- as it has been since it passed verification 5 years ago. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:44, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm removing the following adjective bullet as I've lived in New England my whole life and never heard this word used in this way: " Cute, appealing. (Rarely used., mostly in New England, pronounced by dropping the g: "cunnin")" Slang and extremely uncommon usage such as this does not belong here, but rather in the urbandictionary. —This unsigned comment was added by VirtualX (talk • contribs) 19:15, 17 October 2007 (UTC).
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cunning
Adjective sense 3. # Cute, appealing. (Rarely used., mostly in New England, pronounced by dropping the g: "cunnin") - Algrif 13:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
- Wow! That is a lot of redundant senses! Is there really more than one? --Connel MacKenzie 05:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
- It's definitely old-fashioned American slang to use "cunning" in the sense of "cute", as in "what a cunning dress/baby/puppy!". Finding this usage on the Internet is difficult (it helps if you eliminate the words "linguist" and "stunt" from the search field), but see for example [1], [2], [3]. The bit about "mostly in New England, pronounced by dropping the g" is probably unverifiable original research and ought to be eliminated. Angr 17:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- I searched g.b.c. for "cunnin" and found many cites. A few were of poems about babies. A couple were very explicitly about the "cunning" selfishness of babies. I didn't find any instance that was unambiguously about "cute" (but my search was not very thorough). I wonder whether any somewhat positive adjective applied to babies, puppies, or kittens comes to mean "cute". DCDuring 18:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- It's definitely old-fashioned American slang to use "cunning" in the sense of "cute", as in "what a cunning dress/baby/puppy!". Finding this usage on the Internet is difficult (it helps if you eliminate the words "linguist" and "stunt" from the search field), but see for example [1], [2], [3]. The bit about "mostly in New England, pronounced by dropping the g" is probably unverifiable original research and ought to be eliminated. Angr 17:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)