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

Celaena rapped a finger on the queen’s pert nose.

From "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J. Maas

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 Henry Wallace Phillips

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

From Magnum Bonum by Charlotte Mary Yonge

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

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

Miss Sibson rejoined, in a tone which had been known to quell the pertest of seventeen-year-old rebels.

From Chippinge Borough by Stanley J. Weyman

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 Robert Browning

Dearest little lover mine, Sweetest, pertest valentine; "Desht I'm two years old," he says,-- Blessings on his pretty ways,-- "'Tan't I be your valentine?"

From Mother Truth's Melodies Common Sense For Children by Mrs. E. P. Miller

Gayest, pertest, most reckless of all, Lady Betty was in her glory.

From Sophia A Romance by Stanley John Weyman