Middle English cointe skilled, elegant, fastidious, strange, via Old French from Latin cognitus, past part. of cognoscere to know. The meaning of quaint has undergone many developments since its introduction to English in the 13th cent. Its basic original meaning was ‘knowing’, ‘clever’, applied to people or their actions: how quaint an orator you are – Shakespeare, sometimes in later use with derogatory suggestions of cunning and guile. Transferred to objects, it first denoted ingenious or elaborate workmanship. It then came to mean ‘pretty’, ‘fine’, applied to objects or dress; or, applied to people, ‘finely dressed’, ‘elegant’, sometimes suggesting foppishness or fastidiousness and hence meaning ‘elaborate’, ‘affected’ in reference to language. By a further development, it acquired the sense ‘unfamiliar’, ‘strange’, which in turn shaded into the usual current sense ‘attractively unusual’