mignon

adj

1. Small and cute; pretty in a delicate way; dainty.

   “"Will you not wear these to-morrow?" said the King, offering one pair to Madame de Merœur; then, turning to her sister, he added, "I only hope yours are small enough for those mignon hands."”

   “It was the deep-blue, dreaming, haughty eyes of "Miladi" that he was bringing back to memory, not the brown mignon face that had been so late close to his in the light of the moon.”

   “Or failing that, it must be sweet to be a famous beauty, a golden-haired divinity, like that fashionable enchantress whom she had seen often on the boulevards and in the Champs-Elysées—a mignon face, a figure delicate to fragility, almost buried amidst the luxury of a matchless set of sables, seated in the lightest and most elegant of victorias, behind a pair of thoroughbred blacks.”

   “What she looked at was an unset miniature of a young girl, with a wealth of darkest brown hair, powdered to a gray, and a little straight nose with just a suggestion of a tilt to it, giving the mignon face an expression of pride that the rest of the countenance by no means aided.”

   “Exactly what my grandfather says," Dorothy retorted, fun flashing in that mignon face.”

noun

1. (obsolete, rare)A cute or pretty person; a dandy; a pretty child.

   ““I wish the blow he dealt to that fine essenced mignon had beat his brains out.””

2. (historical)One of the court favourites of Henry III of France.

   “When the mignons, barefoot and clad in sacks with holes for their heads and feet, marched with Henry in a penitential procession, lashing their backs, one wit opined that they should have aimed their blows lower.”

   “Many commentators claimed hyperbolically that, because of their outrageous fashions, it was difficult to tell whether the mignons were male or female.”

name

1. A left tributary of the Sèvre Niortaise in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France.
2. A female given name from French.

   “'Yes,' said Mignon, and stretched out her hand for it, but they would not let her take it back.”

   “Surprisingly, Mignon Anderson, for all her innocence, was born into a theatrical family–in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 31,1892.”

   “"What will you call yourself? You aren't a Mignon or a Ninette, or anything-ette. […]”

3. A surname from French.