"twee" meaning in English

See twee in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

IPA: /twiː/ [Received-Pronunciation] Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-twee.wav [Southern-England] Forms: more twee [comparative], tweer [comparative], most twee [superlative], tweest [superlative]
Rhymes: -iː Etymology: From a childish pronunciation of sweet. The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use in 1905 in Punch. Etymology templates: {{m|en|sweet}} sweet Head templates: {{en-adj|more|er}} twee (comparative more twee or tweer, superlative most twee or tweest)
  1. (British, derogatory) Overly quaint, dainty, cute or nice. Tags: British, derogatory Synonyms: cutesy, precious, saccharine, syrupy Related terms: twee pop Translations (Translations): přeslazený (Czech), vyumělkovaný (Czech), pimpinett (Swedish)
    Sense id: en-twee-en-adj-vPFGrAWk Categories (other): British English

Noun

IPA: /twiː/ [Received-Pronunciation] Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-twee.wav [Southern-England]
Rhymes: -iː Etymology: From a childish pronunciation of sweet. The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use in 1905 in Punch. Etymology templates: {{m|en|sweet}} sweet Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} twee (uncountable)
  1. (music) Ellipsis of twee pop. Tags: abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, uncountable Alternative form of: twee pop Categories (topical): Musical genres
    Sense id: en-twee-en-noun-dWbYY4BZ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 29 71 Topics: entertainment, lifestyle, music

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for twee meaning in English (6.0kB)

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  "etymology_templates": [
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      "args": {
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        "2": "sweet"
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      "expansion": "sweet",
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  "etymology_text": "From a childish pronunciation of sweet. The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use in 1905 in Punch.",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "more twee",
      "tags": [
        "comparative"
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    },
    {
      "form": "tweer",
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        "comparative"
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      "form": "most twee",
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        "superlative"
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        {
          "text": "Those Beatrix Potter animals are a little twee for my taste.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, Janet Foster, Docklands: Urban Change and Conflict in a Community in Transition, London, Philadelphia, Pa.: UCL Press, page 82",
          "text": "Despite the fact that the designs were all a bit twee […] they stood out a mile in the market place at that time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Alan Murphy, Scotland Highlands & Islands Handbook: The Travel Guide, Bath, Somerset: Footprint Handbooks, page 11",
          "text": "Forget the clichéd image of Brigadoon and shortbread tins, the dreadfully twee tartan tat and Celtic kitsch that, sadly, still exists in the 21st century, and is too often passed off as a genuine Highland experience.",
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        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, Peter Ellison, Essential Non-fiction, Dublin: Folens Publishers, page 40",
          "text": "As always with Disney, there are moments when it all seems a bit twee, others when it is excessively PC.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 September 8, Stephen S. Hall, quoting Richard Dawkins, “Darwin's Rottweiler: Sir Richard Dawkins: Evolution's fiercest champion, far too fierce”, in Discover, archived from the original on 2016-01-01",
          "text": "I just wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying, \"I am a duckbilled platypus, and this is how I find my shrimps.\" I think it would have been twee.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2015 June 2, Kenneth Partridge, “With ‘West End Girls,’ Pet Shop Boys set a high standard for U.K. hip-hop”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 2015-09-06",
          "text": "[Neil] Tennant's accent obviously has a lot to do with that, but the fact he's rapping is further masked by his twee, effeminate delivery.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        [
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          "cute"
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          "nice",
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        "(British, derogatory) Overly quaint, dainty, cute or nice."
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          "word": "cutesy"
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        {
          "word": "precious"
        },
        {
          "word": "saccharine"
        },
        {
          "word": "syrupy"
        }
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          "code": "cs",
          "lang": "Czech",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "přeslazený"
        },
        {
          "code": "cs",
          "lang": "Czech",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "vyumělkovaný"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "pimpinett"
        }
      ]
    }
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "type": "quotation"
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    "English terms with audio links",
    "English uncountable nouns",
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      "form": "more twee",
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      "tags": [
        "comparative"
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        "English terms with usage examples"
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        {
          "text": "Those Beatrix Potter animals are a little twee for my taste.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, Janet Foster, Docklands: Urban Change and Conflict in a Community in Transition, London, Philadelphia, Pa.: UCL Press, page 82",
          "text": "Despite the fact that the designs were all a bit twee […] they stood out a mile in the market place at that time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Alan Murphy, Scotland Highlands & Islands Handbook: The Travel Guide, Bath, Somerset: Footprint Handbooks, page 11",
          "text": "Forget the clichéd image of Brigadoon and shortbread tins, the dreadfully twee tartan tat and Celtic kitsch that, sadly, still exists in the 21st century, and is too often passed off as a genuine Highland experience.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
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          "text": "As always with Disney, there are moments when it all seems a bit twee, others when it is excessively PC.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 September 8, Stephen S. Hall, quoting Richard Dawkins, “Darwin's Rottweiler: Sir Richard Dawkins: Evolution's fiercest champion, far too fierce”, in Discover, archived from the original on 2016-01-01",
          "text": "I just wouldn’t have felt comfortable saying, \"I am a duckbilled platypus, and this is how I find my shrimps.\" I think it would have been twee.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015 June 2, Kenneth Partridge, “With ‘West End Girls,’ Pet Shop Boys set a high standard for U.K. hip-hop”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 2015-09-06",
          "text": "[Neil] Tennant's accent obviously has a lot to do with that, but the fact he's rapping is further masked by his twee, effeminate delivery.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "Overly quaint, dainty, cute or nice."
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        [
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          "cute"
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        "(British, derogatory) Overly quaint, dainty, cute or nice."
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          "word": "cutesy"
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        {
          "word": "precious"
        },
        {
          "word": "saccharine"
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        {
          "word": "syrupy"
        }
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      "code": "cs",
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      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "přeslazený"
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      "word": "vyumělkovaný"
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  "word": "twee"
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        },
        {
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.