Definition of "mignon"

"Will you not wear these to-morrow?" said the King, offering one pair to Madame de Merœur; then, turning to her sister, he added, "I only hope yours are small enough for those mignon hands."

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), page 127

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, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], “Cigarette en Condottiera”, in Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], page 194

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.

, [Mary Elizabeth Braddon], “‘And it brought forth Wild Grapes’”, in Ishmael: […], volume II, London: John and Robert Maxwell, […], page 119

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.

1899, Paul Leicester Ford, Janice Meredith: A Story of the American Revolution, volume 1, Dodd, Mead & Company, page 64

Exactly what my grandfather says," Dorothy retorted, fun flashing in that mignon face.

1911 September 29, Marcin Barner, “Britz of Headquarters”, in The Branford Opinion

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.

1987, Persistence of Vision: The Journal of the Film Faculty of the City University of New York, numbers 5-8, page 68

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, […]

2002, Seçil Büker, “The Film Does not End with an Ecstatic Kiss”, in Deniz Kandiyoti, Ayşe Saktanber, editors, Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey, Rutgers University Press, page 161

“I wish the blow he dealt to that fine essenced mignon had beat his brains out.”

1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt, published 2008, page 264

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.

2003, Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, Harvard, published 2003, page 330

Many commentators claimed hyperbolically that, because of their outrageous fashions, it was difficult to tell whether the mignons were male or female.

2005, Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, University of Chicago, published 2005, page 220