Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a superficially clever person.

1922–24		O.O. McIntyre White Light Nights 3: The capricious cuties who live by their ability to find the ‘live one’ do not angle for visiting Babbitts.
1924		H.L. Wilson Professor How Could You! 313: Why, you sly old cutie! Who’d have thought it?
1942		R. Chandler High Window 90: ‘Must take a good man to run them fast babies.’ ‘Don’t kid yourself, dad. All those cuties do is push buttons.’.
1953		R. Chandler Long Good-Bye 57: This rap will be hanging over you for a long, long time, cutie.

2. (orig. US, also cuttie) a pretty young woman; occas. of a man.

1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Intermittent Fusser’ in Ade’s Fables 44: There comes a brief Period in the Veal Epoch of every Sentimental Tommy when the only real Cutie is one who can propel a Canoe and throw Overhand.
1919		New Castle Herald (PA) 9 Sept. 4/4: ‘Ain’t our mayor the cutey?’.
1924		Hecht & Bodenheim Cutie 7: Cutie was a shapely Mamma of twenty-one summers.
1927		H.C. Witwer Classics in Sl. 12: Blanche is a cutey, which stops traffic every time she goes downtown for a walk, but this Kate is a tough baby and swings a mean tongue.
1930		E. Glyn Flirt and Flapper 108: Flapper: A cutie is a little girl who’s cute enough to hide from the wife and get the dough from the husband.
1935		Ted Yates This Is New York 3 May [synd. col.] Dick Drewery was seen with a cutie the other sun-up.
1939		B. Appel Power-House 14: I’ll doll up and meet a real nice cutey.
1940		R. Chandler Farewell, My Lovely (1949) 209: A male cutie with henna’d hair drooped at a bungalow grand piano and tickled the keys lasciviously.
1946		J. Evans Halo in Blood (1988) 82: That kind of canoodling [...] should have shaped her into a cocktail-lounge cutie.
1959		Mad mag. June 33: The real lowdown on the cutie who made her guy fall . . . in a big way!
1969		D. Pendleton Executioner (1973) 15: He smiled at a gargantuan-chested cutie in a technically topless swimsuit.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 155: [He] will be broken in, [...] particularly if he is a cutie or peach fuzz (young).
1973		L. Bangs in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 123: Cut to home of Jerry’s cutie, Angie.
1986		S. King It (1987) 348: That’s cause they know how cute you are, Eds – just like me. I saw what a cutie you were the first time I met you.
1999		Guardian Guide 19–25 June 5: Cuties only, please, be you boys or girls.
2000		W. Shaw Westsiders 257: Boys in baggy pants slouch around [...] trying to impress the ‘Crenshaw cuties’.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 149: [of gay men] They hit the Golden Cavern Hotel. The cuties pile out. Rock and Sal weave.
2001		G. Coughlan Everyday Eng. and Sl. 🌐 Cuttie (n): young girl.
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 181: The Ivory Snow girl [...] She’s a cutie alright.
2014		T. Black Artefacts of the Dead [ebook] She was a sweet wee thing — a cutie, his wife would say.
2022		J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 62: I been in the fucking joint bout three times Your Whole Life, you li’l cutie!

3. (US) an attractive object.

1908

B. Fisher A. Mutt in Fisher Mutt Complete Compilation (1977) 151: Oh joy! I won 8 bones. Look at ’em, the little cuties.

4. (US) someone who is extremely shrewd or adept.

1919		H.C. Witwer Smile A Minute 259: The French language made everything but the Cuteys quit, but maybe they talk like me and you now.
1938		A.J. Liebling Back Where I Came From 110: Watching a cutey spar with an ordinary dull fighter [W&F].
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 43: A beautiful gymnasium fighter, a real cutie from way back.
1955		B. Schulberg On the Waterfront (1964) 198: The groom was a cutie marrying City Hall to beat the rap of an eight-hour day.
1972		E. Grogan Ringolevio 356: A real slick trick! A real cutie! I wonder where he lives.
2000		Indep. Rev. 4 Mar. 11: Carl Mix portrays his family as a fun-loving group of wise-assed cuties.

5. a general term of address to a (pretty) woman; also, cynically, to a handsome man.

1908		D.G. Phillips Susan Lenox II 156: ‘Evening, cutie,’ said he.
1915		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 29: Say cutey rush the eats will ya?
1916		J. Lait ‘Second from the End’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 185: Welcome to Broadway, cutey.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 75: ‘Thanks, cutie [...] Say, isn’t this fun’.
1924		Eve. News (Sydney) 23 Feb. 4/4: ‘Two beers for two dears, miss, please,’ You got nothing on me, lobster face. Six mugs for six thugs, cutie.
1927		Frankie Jaxon ‘Willie the Weeper’ 🎵 Someone said, ‘Cutie, better listen to reason.’ / Says, ‘I want my coffee, want it good and strong, / I want to have biscuits eighteen inches long!’.
1930		‘Armitage Traill’ Scarface Ch. iv n.p.: ‘Hello, cutie!’ he exclaimed with a grin. ‘How about the next dance?’.
1947		J.P. Marquand Polly Fulton 144: Hello Cutie, he said, what’s new?
1954		B. Appel Sweet Money Girl 130: I expect some sweet loving, cutie.
1966		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 126: Okay, cutie, just one more thing before we go, / I been playing a fast game of Cotch and I lost all my dough.
1978		L. Kramer Faggots 363: That’s it, Cutie, hold out for the one million!
2003		A.N. LeBlanc Random Family 303: The boys started kicking it to me you know trying to talk to me. One boy was like what’s up cutie.
2010		Codella and Bennett Alphaville (2011) 283: ‘Hey sexy,’ she half whispered [...] ‘Hey yourself, cutie’.

6. (US) a smart, ‘clever’ move; a cunning scheme.

1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1972		(con. c.1930) G. Sothern Georgia 315: My pup, Okie, seemed to sense I was leaving and was running around the apartment frantically and doing his cuties in hopes I wouldn’t leave him.
1980		(con. 1940s–60s) H. Huncke ‘Joseph Martinez’ in Eve. Sun Turned Crimson (1998) 221: His slightly boastful tone when he had been clever or someone had pulled a cutey.
1987		S. King Misery (1988) 223: Nor could he pull a cutie like opening the capsules and mixing the powder into [...] icecream.