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

The character design employs the pert nose, heart-shaped face and huge eyes that are standard in anime, but these conventions never feel static because Suzu isn’t.

From New York Times ● Jan. 13, 2022

“Mocking and jeering, were you not? Skeptical, with planchette’s very words before your eyes? Those young people pert and insolent?”

From "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

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

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

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

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

This Heuresis, this Invention, is the proudest jackanapes, the pertest, self-conceited boy that ever breathed.

From A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 9 by Various

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