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.
 * 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.

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, , . 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)

--- My mother and her sisters often voiced this exact usage (even the dropped 'g), much to the perplexity of my erudite Texas-born wife. Mom's family were east-coast NYC/NJ area mid-upper-class, men-folk university educated in the 1895-1930 era, 2nd generation americans of German-Irish heritage. They summered in Eastern Pennsylvania, not New England.

Very common as 'cunnin' meaning cute in SouthWest Nova Scotia, Canada - Barrington to Yarmouth area. The area grew from landings of the Loyalists from New England.

2005 Plato citation
I believe it's under the wrong sense. It seems to mean craftiness, not skill in general. Equinox ◑ 15:53, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

present participle of can
present participle of can (v.t., v.i. [Obs. "to know")] --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)