Dictionary

mignon

see also: Mignon

Pronunciation

(British) IPA: /ˈmɪnjɒn/, /ˈmɪnjɑ̃/
(America) IPA: /mɪnˈjɑn/

Adjective

mignon

Small and cute; pretty in a delicate way; dainty.
- 1867, Ouida, Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert, Volume II, Chapman and Hall (1867), page 194 ↗:
  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.
- 1867, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ishmael, John and Robert Maxwell (1867), page 119 ↗:
  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.
- 1899, Paul Leicester Ford, Janice Meredith: A Story of the American Revolution, Volume 1, Dodd, Mead & Company (1899), page 64 ↗:
  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.
- 1911, Marcin Barner, "[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=GVdcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=G1YNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6038,7076075&dq=mignon-face&hl=en Britz of Headquarters]", The Branford Opinion, 29 September 1911:
  Exactly what my grandfather says," Dorothy retorted, fun flashing in that mignon face.
- 1987, Persistence of Vision: The Journal of the Film Faculty of the City University of New York, Issues 5-8, page 68 ↗:
  Starting a dance can be as fortuitous as its termination: a very short, mignon girl asks a tall guy to dance with her, then drops him a moment later without a word.
- 2002, Seçil Büker, "The Film Does not End with an Ecstatic Kiss", in Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (eds. Deniz Kandiyoti & Ayşe Saktanber), Rutgers University Press (2002), ISBN 0813530814, page 161 ↗:
  Magazines dubbed her 'a girl for the salons', 'the pretty girl' of the Turkish cinema, perfectly suited to the role of a blonde, mignon girl who had been educated at the best schools. In later years she herself would say, 'I was cute and sweet, but unable to project the image of a sexy woman, […]

Noun

mignon (plural mignons)

(historical) One of the court favourites of Henry III of France.
- 2003, Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, Harvard 2003, p. 330:
  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.
- 2005, Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, University of Chicago 2005, p. 220:
  Many commentators claimed hyperbolically that, because of their outrageous fashions, it was difficult to tell whether the mignons were male or female.
(rare) A cute person; a pretty child.

Mignon

Proper noun

A female given name.
- 1984, Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus, Vintage (2006), ISBN 9780099388616, page 150 ↗:
  'Yes,' said Mignon, and stretched out her hand for it, but they would not let her take it back.
- 2002, Anthony Slide, Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses, University Press of Kentucky (2002), ISBN 081312249X, unnumbered page ↗:
  Surprisingly, Mignon Anderson, for all her innocence, was born into a theatrical family–in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 31,1892.
- 2012, Carole DeSanti, The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2012), ISBN 9780547661209, page 93 ↗:
  "What will you call yourself? You aren't a Mignon or a Ninette, or anything-ette. […]

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