twee

Use this forum to suggest Good Words for Professor Beard.
Bailey
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twee

Postby Bailey » Sat Jul 21, 2007 9:38 am

twee(tw)
adj. Chiefly British
Overly precious or nice.



[Alteration of tweet, baby-talk alteration of sweet.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
I guess I use cutesy, but I like twee best.

mark another-short-word Bailey

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sluggo
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Postby sluggo » Fri Aug 03, 2007 10:59 pm

Love this word.

I first encountered it in Ian MacDonald's examination of Beatle song origins Revolution In the Head wherein he describes one of Lennon's casual works as "a twee make-weight". That's the kind of phrase that plows a deep groove in the linguistic waves of brain.

;
(the song was "It's Only Love", original working title: "That's a Nice Hat")
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Slava
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Word Theft!

Postby Slava » Sat Aug 04, 2007 12:29 am

Egad, you blighter! Thou hast stolen my word! Just yesterday I was thinking of posting this one as a suggestion, and you've beaten me to the punch. That'll teach me to wait a day. I do like it, though, so I'm glad someone has suggested it.

However, I never thought of it as being overly cutesy. My feel for twee has always been rather positive. As in, "My, you're looking rather twee this evening."

Hope all is twee with you,

Slava

sluggo
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Re: Word Theft!

Postby sluggo » Sat Aug 04, 2007 2:22 am

Egad, you blighter! Thou hast stolen my word! Just yesterday I was thinking of posting this one as a suggestion, and you've beaten me to the punch. That'll teach me to wait a day.
To quote another Beatle Britishism, you've left it too late...
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gailr
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Postby gailr » Sat Aug 04, 2007 4:53 am

Wow! A friend just asked me what this word meant a couple days ago. synchronicity...

Perry Lassiter
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Postby Perry Lassiter » Sat Feb 11, 2012 1:28 am

Time passes.....more time passes...five years in fact, or nearly so. And today I had the opportunity on a Scrabble board to play the word twee. A light bulb went off! "i can enter that in the GW forum," thought I. But then I discovered, as had Slava before me, that the word was already discussed. Now I must decide between curses and blessings, but probably the latter. I might only add that i feel a sense of the feminine about the word, a sort of overdone foppishness. Never thought of it positively except that humor is positive. Makes me think of an Oscar Wilde play, earnestly, that is.
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