quaint [ME] In the Middle Ages quaint meant ‘wise, clever’, and ‘ingenious, cunningly designed, or skilfully made’. Another early sense was ‘beautiful or elegant’. Over time these meanings led to the more general notion of ‘out of the ordinary’. The current use, describing something interestingly unusual or old-fashioned, is found from the late 18th century—before this, the word had become quite rare. It comes from Old French cointe, from Latin cognoscere ‘to know’, which is the root of words such as acquaint [ME], literally ‘to make known to’; cognoscenti [L18th] from Italian for ‘those who know’; *incognito; and *recognize.