cute as a button

1. Also, cute as a bug's ear. Pretty or attractive in a dainty way, as in That baby is cute as a button. Cute originally was a shortening of acute, for “sharp-witted and clever,” but in the early 1800s it also took on its current meaning. Other than that buttons and bug's hearing organs can be small, there is no good explanation for these similes.

Example Sentences

“She was cute as a button,” he said.

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“What happens in another 16 years, when he’s no longer small enough to carry and cute as a button?” writes the mother of a toddler who is described as having a “rare and catastrophic form of epilepsy that prevents his brain from processing basic information” and makes it unlikely that he will ever walk, crawl or talk.

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My gunbreaker, cute as a button she is.

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The eldest, the Point Fermin lighthouse in San Pedro, is nearly 150 years old and retired from service but still cute as a button.

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The slinky predator named Elizabeth Ann, born Dec. 10 and announced Thursday, is cute as a button.

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