for our Texans here, do you know the origins of the phrase "cute as a bug's ear"?

[CTyankee]

My mother used it and I remember it growing up in north Texas. I never really understood what was so cute about a bug's ear, but it was kind of funny...

Mother was born in El Paso and moved to Dallas where I was born. I never heard anyone else use it as I was growing up so I assumed mother had made it up. But I Googled it...and not too much turned up...

[notadmblnd]

1. I don't know the origins, but bugs don't have ears

so what do you think she was trying to say?

[CTyankee]

2. that someone is attractive in a sweet way. The last time I heard her say it, she was

referring to my daughter's fiance, later husband. He's a Bostonian and when I told him what she said he was downright mystified...and maybe a bit put off by the "bug" part...

[notadmblnd]

3. I guess that's one way to think about it.

[angstlessk]

4. I found this on google

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cut5.htm

Presumably working on the principle that the smaller the thing is the cuter it will be, the idiom suggests its subject is the epitome of cuteness. It means some person, especially a child, who is pretty or attractive in a dainty way. Other than that, no good explanation exists for the existence of the simile. I’m also reliably informed that, entomologically speaking, the idiom is nonsense, since bugs don’t have ears.

It belongs with a huge set of such expressions, mostly but not all American, which no doubt your Chinese friends would be equally puzzled by: cute as a bug in a rug, cute as a button, cute as a weasel, cute as a kitten, cute as a (pet) fox, cute as a bunny, cute as a speckled puppy, cute as a cupcake, cute as a kewpie doll, cute as a razor (nick), as well as the deeply deprecatory cute as a washtub (from Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely) and cute as a shithouse rat (in James Joyce’s Ulysses).

Some of these are lesser-known variations of common similes (bugs in rugs are more often snug than cute, for example) and some of the older ones are using cute in its original sense of clever, shrewd or quick-witted (the word dates from the eighteenth century and is a shortened or aphetic form of acute). That sense has survived longer in British English than in American (“she might be too cute to fall into the trap”, Agatha Christie once wrote).

Here’s the earliest example I can find of your version:

“You are very cute, aren’t you?” the traveler said sarcastically. “Widder Wheeler says I’m cute as a Bug’s ear, and she knows.”

The News (Frederick, Maryland), 21 Apr. 1900.

[sufrommich]

5. My grandma on my dads side was from Ohio

and I remember her using it too.When I was little I took it to mean a bugs ear would be so tiny it would have to be cute.

[theHandpuppet]

6. Yeah, the phrase is common there

Only where I come from (the hills) it's shortened a bit to, "Cuter'n a bug".

[PassingFair]

7. I'm pretty sure it means the same thing as "finer than frog's hair". nt

[CTyankee]

9. I think that one means finer in the sense of slenderer and smaller...

not more excellent...amiright?

[PassingFair]

10. My telephone "boyfriend" from Tennessee used to tell me that...

I was finer than frog's hair.

This was in the days before FAXES, by the way.
We used to talk every day to report sales numbers when
I worked in an OEM sales office that rep'd parts from Tennessee.

LOVED talking to him!

[CTyankee]

11. that is kinda sweet actually...altho how much would it take to be "finer than frog's hair"?

I dunno...but it does seem a bit of a "left handed compliment, as we used to say in Texas...

[PassingFair]

12. From the "urban dictionary"

(Since frogs do not have hair, something that is "finer than frog hair" means something that is as thin/fine/excellent as possible).
1. Bill: "How are you doing today?"

Joe: "Man, I'm finer than frog hair!!"

2. Bill: "Wow, have you seen that new girl in accounting?"

Joe: "Yes...what a hottie, she is finer than frog hair!!"

[Cirque du So-What]

8. I understand

'cuter than a speckled pup,' having actually seen speckled pups that are indeed cute.