#7 - Dainty

Dainty!  What a delightful, delectable word!  And it feels so perfectly French!  In fact, when we English-speakers use the word petite we often mean something very much akin to "dainty."  And yet, petite only means "small" in French, and, dashingly disappointing as it may be, French has no  duplicate for "dainty."  (Okay, I'll stop with the alliteration now).


In fact, WordReference.com offers only one definition: délicat.  But délicat is basically the same as its English counterpart, "delicate." 

The closest word to "dainty," in my opinion, is actually the French word menu.  Though it lacks the expansive and delightful meaning of "dainty," something about its precision strikes me as being very similar.  WordReference defines menu as "thin, slim, slender, slight, or willowy," as well as "small, petty, or minor."

LaRousse gives these examples of menu: 
Couper du lard en menus morceaux. ("Cut the bacon into thin slices")
Une jeune fille toute menue.  ("A slender young girl")
Le voyage a entraîné de menus frais supplémentaires. ("The trip involved some minor expenses") 
La menue monnaie refers to coins of little value (those made of copper or brass, for example).  

All in all, almost every example I can find of menu seems to be about cooking, describing the human figure, or talking about expenses.

"Dainty," however, means so much more than any of that.  There's something inherently wonderful about dain-ti-ness.  As with so many great words, the sound itself conveys half the meaning.  I've seen it defined as "small and pretty" but that doesn't suffice.  I like Merriam-Webster's definition: "marked by delicate or diminutive beauty, form, or grace."  To that, I would add "refined, precise, precious, and rather adorable."  

"Delicious" could also be included in that list since dainty has often been associated with food and eating.  Indeed, Merriam-Webster's first definition of the word is "tasting good : tasty; attractively prepared and served."  Phrases such as "dainty morsels" and "he's a dainty eater" come readily to mind.  The epitome of dainty food is, to me, Japanese cuisine.  Here's part of an actual meal that I had with my friends at a ryokan inn in Japan.  

Delectable presentation, tiny portions, and good use of color and space--it was a meal designed to be savoured, bite for bite.  Also, chopsticks themselves are both a symbol and source of daintiness--eating with them requires grace, skill, and precision, and the food needs to be prepared in advance as tiny, separate pieces, so you can pluck them up, like a crane plucking small fish up out of the water, and relish one morsel at a time.

Do a Google image search for "dainty" and you get endless pictures of flowers, women, jewelry, butterflies, and babies--and a few other things, like tattoos (?!?), teacups, and My Little Pony.  

Also, continuing the food trend: 

 

And:

Honestly, in terms of Google images, this seems closer to the French word gourmand than anything else!  It's funny how associations can have so little to do with the textbook definition, and yet everything to do with how we think or feel about a word.  That is the essence of untranslatables.  The Google image search is the best medium I've found for visualizing what words really mean to the people who say them. 

Unfortunately, it's impossible to do a comparable Google search for the French word menu since, unless you add a noun to it, all you get are pictures of restaurant menus....  I guess we can't know exactly what most French people picture when they say or hear menu as an adjective.  I suspect for them, it depends entirely on the context.  That's why "dainty" is such an exceptional adjective--it means so many things all by itself.  A great feat for a tiny word.  ^_^