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

She makes precise choices in pert, clever sentences.

From New York Times ● May 23, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Scottish Ghost Stories by Elliott O'Donnell

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

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

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

From Sophia A Romance by Stanley John Weyman