Since Monica was born I've called her a bunch of different nicknames. My favorite and the one I use the most is Button because she's cute as a button. Now 5 weeks in, Tony says to me, "Where did the saying cute as a button come from? Have you ever heard someone say, oh that's a cute button?" Umm . . . good point. Oh well, she's still my little button!
Proving the point that you made in an earlier post that I have to google questions that you have that I can't answer...
ReplyDeleteThere was not one conclusive, totally satisfactory, definitive answer that I could find, but they all said basically the following:
There isn't a definate answer to this, but these are the most approved explainations:
cute as a button isn't the original phrase. The word cute is derived from the 1731 english meaning of the word acute, bright or clever. So being as acute as a button makes more sense as it's refering to the shine of polished brass buttons that make them stand out from others... more commonly known as "as bright as a button"; but seeing as this phrase derived from "as acute as a button" (where acute meant clever in 1731) it's easy to see how people mistook it for cute and so the phrase was redirected at cute little things and the meaning of cute was changed over the years... so yes, it came from acute as a button, which mean bright as a button, which has the obvious origins in shiny brass buttons that stood out from the dark coats that the queens men used to wear.
Another reasonable explanation, is that the word cute is right, but the word button doesn't refer to a shirt button, but a flower bud, such as the popular name of small flowers called a "bachelor's button". Which obviously makes more sense as baby flowers are much cuter than shirt buttons.
I'm with Julie...I feel the need to google questions asked and left unanswered. :)
ReplyDeleteHere's a site I found with all sorts of theories posted (mostly in the comments): http://stevish.com/archives/29