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

Sales were boosted by a national prime-time television ad campaign in which a disorganized young man bumps into a pert young woman at the library, knocking her Trapper to the floor.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 29, 2022

Even as Lady Constance gazed upward, a leaf landed on her pert, doll-like nose.

From "The Interrupted Tale" by Maryrose Wood

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

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 Phillips, Henry Wallace

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 Holley, Marietta

Thou shouldst grow perter, or submit to a solitary quarantine, if thou wouldst not infect the whole brood.'

From Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 7 by Richardson, Samuel

Soon see your wish fulfilled in either child, The pert made perter, and the tame made wild.

From Magnum Bonum by Yonge, Charlotte Mary

And he came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape; Full of his travel, struck at himself.

From Browning's Heroines by Armfield, Maxwell

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 Torrey, Bradford

V And he came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape; 100 Full of his travel, struck at himself.

From Dramatic Romances by Browning, Robert

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 McSpadden, J. Walker (Joseph Walker)

Then I laughed loudly—it was only a hare, the prettiest and pertest thing imaginable.

From Scottish Ghost Stories by O'Donnell, Elliott