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

It’s a mild thing, a pert, often creamy-colored whorl of fungus that goes well with thyme sautéed in butter.

From New York Times ● Jan. 18, 2023

The girl in front of him had freckled, light brown skin; inquisitive brown eyes; and a pert, round nose.

From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova

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

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 Samuel Richardson

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

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

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 Maxwell Armfield

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

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

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

From Scottish Ghost Stories by Elliott O'Donnell