adj. quaint·er, quaint·est
1. Charmingly odd, especially in an old-fashioned way: "Sarah Orne Jewett ... was dismissed by one critic as merely a New England old maid who wrote quaint, plotless sketches of late 19th-century coastal Maine" (James McManus).
2. Archaic Unfamiliar or unusual in character; strange: quaint dialect words.
3. Archaic Cleverly made or done.
[Middle English queinte, cointe, clever, cunning, peculiar, from Old French, clever, from Latin cognitus, past participle of cognōscere, to learn; see COGNITION.]
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Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
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