Other forms: cutest, cuter
Cute means sweet and charming to look at — a kitten, a baby, a small cottage. It is warm, informal and extremely common, and it is applied to anything small enough to trigger the reaction.
There are two things worth flagging. Applied to an adult, cute usually means attractive, and in American English that is the primary meaning: he's cute means he is good-looking, not that he resembles a kitten. And there is an older sense, still alive, meaning clever in a slightly annoying way — don't get cute with me, a cute trick — which is where the word actually comes from. It is not a formal word and will look out of place in any serious writing.
1adjectivecuteSweet and charming to look at.
“They sent a photo of the puppy, which was unbearably cute.”
synonyms: adorable, sweet, endearing
2adjectiveattractiveAttractive, said of a person.
“His flatmate is cute.”
3adjectivecleverClever in a way that irritates.
“Do not get cute with me.”
cute is a quality of charm.
Also accepted in games: adorable
Cute is a clipped form of acute, meaning sharp or shrewd — the a was dropped and marked with an apostrophe for a century before it settled. The modern sweet sense grew out of the clever one, by way of a small child being described as sharp.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eḱ-
English, today
cute
Aphetic form of acute, originally meaning “keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd” (1731). Meaning transferred to “pretty, fetching” by US students (slang) 1834. Meaning drifted further to describe the pleasing attraction to features usually possessed by the young.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Everyday Adjectives