General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsfor our Texans here, do you know the origins of the phrase "cute as a bug's ear"?
My mother used it and I remember it growing up in north Texas. I never really understood what was so cute about a bug's ear, but it was kind of funny...
Mother was born in El Paso and moved to Dallas where I was born. I never heard anyone else use it as I was growing up so I assumed mother had made it up. But I Googled it...and not too much turned up...
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)so what do you think she was trying to say?
CTyankee
(64,041 posts)referring to my daughter's fiance, later husband. He's a Bostonian and when I told him what she said he was downright mystified...and maybe a bit put off by the "bug" part...
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)angstlessk
(11,862 posts)Presumably working on the principle that the smaller the thing is the cuter it will be, the idiom suggests its subject is the epitome of cuteness. It means some person, especially a child, who is pretty or attractive in a dainty way. Other than that, no good explanation exists for the existence of the simile. Im also reliably informed that, entomologically speaking, the idiom is nonsense, since bugs dont have ears.
It belongs with a huge set of such expressions, mostly but not all American, which no doubt your Chinese friends would be equally puzzled by: cute as a bug in a rug, cute as a button, cute as a weasel, cute as a kitten, cute as a (pet) fox, cute as a bunny, cute as a speckled puppy, cute as a cupcake, cute as a kewpie doll, cute as a razor (nick), as well as the deeply deprecatory cute as a washtub (from Raymond Chandlers Farewell My Lovely) and cute as a shithouse rat (in James Joyces Ulysses).
Some of these are lesser-known variations of common similes (bugs in rugs are more often snug than cute, for example) and some of the older ones are using cute in its original sense of clever, shrewd or quick-witted (the word dates from the eighteenth century and is a shortened or aphetic form of acute). That sense has survived longer in British English than in American (she might be too cute to fall into the trap, Agatha Christie once wrote).
Heres the earliest example I can find of your version:
You are very cute, arent you? the traveler said sarcastically. Widder Wheeler says Im cute as a Bugs ear, and she knows.
The News (Frederick, Maryland), 21 Apr. 1900.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)and I remember her using it too.When I was little I took it to mean a bugs ear would be so tiny it would have to be cute.
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)Only where I come from (the hills) it's shortened a bit to, "Cuter'n a bug".
PassingFair
(22,434 posts)CTyankee
(64,041 posts)not more excellent...amiright?
PassingFair
(22,434 posts)I was finer than frog's hair.
This was in the days before FAXES, by the way.
We used to talk every day to report sales numbers when
I worked in an OEM sales office that rep'd parts from Tennessee.
LOVED talking to him!
CTyankee
(64,041 posts)I dunno...but it does seem a bit of a "left handed compliment, as we used to say in Texas...
PassingFair
(22,434 posts)(Since frogs do not have hair, something that is "finer than frog hair" means something that is as thin/fine/excellent as possible).
1. Bill: "How are you doing today?"
Joe: "Man, I'm finer than frog hair!!"
2. Bill: "Wow, have you seen that new girl in accounting?"
Joe: "Yes...what a hottie, she is finer than frog hair!!"
Cirque du So-What
(26,328 posts)'cuter than a speckled pup,' having actually seen speckled pups that are indeed cute.