pert

Produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by his frequent collaborator Samson Raphaelson, this Paramount picture, running a pert 82 minutes, positively shimmers with wit and sizzles with innuendo.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026

Boonbunchachoke’s strange and funny script is constructed of multiple nesting stories, like how my own vacuum pops out a pert little dustbuster that really digs into the cracks.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 4, 2026

Smug, as we use it as a synonym for conceited or self-righteous, emerged from its earlier sense of “neat and trim,” which is exactly the ideal of a pert bump.

From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2025

Hilary Duff — forever young, forever pert, forever blond — found a home on the Disney Channel two decades ago as Lizzie McGuire, a self-possessed tween with an animated alter ego.

From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2022

Her black hair was coiled in waves around her head, beneath a pert, proper cream-colored hat.

From "X: A Novel" by Ilyasah Shabazz

Helen Mirren – sometimes interrogated by a perter, more wayward, youthful version of herself – moves through some 60 years of regality.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 10, 2013

And I thought the woman looked quite a little perter; it duz down-trod folks lots of good to have somebody take their part.

From Samantha at Coney Island and a Thousand Other Islands by Marietta Holley

Oft has it been my lot to mark, A proud, conceited, talking spark, Returning from his finished tour, Grown ten times perter than before.

From The American Gentleman's Guide to Politeness and Fashion or, Familiar Letters to his Nephews by Henry Lunettes

God knows there wouldn't 'a' been a perter monkey in the bunch, if so it hadn't come I was scart, or thinkin' of somethin' else, when a hot-box arrived.

From Mr. Scraggs by Henry Wallace Phillips

Like all their kin, they had been born with their eyes open and were much "perter" then other animal infants.

From A Mountain Boyhood by Enos B. (Enos Benjamin) Comstock

The lively strain of a white-eyed vireo, pertest of songsters, comes to me from somewhere on my right, and the soft chipping of myrtle warblers is all but incessant.

From A Florida Sketch-Book by Bradford Torrey

His hair was long and yellow and hung clustering about his shoulders, for all the world like a schoolgirl's; and he bore himself with as mincing a gait as the pertest of them.

From Robin Hood by J. Walker (Joseph Walker) McSpadden

She were the sprackest little maid, the sharpest, pertest thing.

From The Verse-Book of a Homely Woman by Fay Inchfawn

They 've paid for a good night's sleep, 'nd it 's my duty as a director uv the Han'bul 'nd St. Jo to pertest ag'in' this disturbance.

From Second Book of Tales by Eugene Field

He raised his hand as the pertest of the maids would have answered him, and there followed an uncomfortable pause.

From The Ward of King Canute; a romance of the Danish conquest by Ottilie A. (Ottilia Adelina) Liljencrantz