Egad...this conversation makes me think how terribly immature I am for my age!
I will say to a coworker "How cute is that skirt?"
However, I'm not phony...if I didn't like the skirt I would keep my mouth shut.
So I guess what I'm saying is that "cute" is one of those overused words that has lost meaning because people apply it to so many things.
Then again, I have a philosophy on curse words that may be related to this conversation. OK, just because someone decided that a certain series of letters constitute a "bad" word doesn't make the word itself "bad." The emotion it is supposed to evoke may indeed be bad, but the word itself is not. Therefore, I could look someone straight in the eye and say "You happy flower face parental love child" and while it doesn't sound particularly mean if I mean it to be mean then it is. Because someone a long time ago thought that using the word "fuckhead" in that statement is what would make it a bad statement has no bearing on the emotion I am feeling as I say the less innocuous statement.
Having said that, "cute" can just be a formation of letters that we use when we are trying to provide a compliment, or an idea of loveliness..it's just verbal convention that leads us to use cute instead of some more illuminating and aesthetic verbage.
(What the hell did I just say up there? Never mind, I'm just talking out of my ass.)
