amoretto means A cupid or putto (representation of a naked baby or small child, often with wings). Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 90 out of 100.
amoretto is pronounced /ˌæməˈɹɛtəʊ/.
Why “amoretto” is a great word
A representation of a small, winged, often naked child, symbolizing Cupid or a similar spirit of love. From Italian *amoretto*, a diminutive of *amore* ("love"), from Latin *amor* ("love, affection"). First attested in English in the 1590s. Unlike a *putto*, a more general secular or decorative infant, or an *amour*, which denotes a lover or affair, the amoretto is purely the emblem of love's abstract force. It is the stucco figure smirking from a Baroque ceiling cornice, the faint outline in a marble frieze trailing a stone sash, or the gilded touch on a painted manuscript margin—a perpetual, silent emissary of a warmth it never physically possesses.
Etymology
An Italian diminutive of Amore, the god of love.
noun
- A cupid or putto (representation of a naked baby or small child, often with wings).“1622, Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman, London: Francis Constable, Chapter 12, “Andreas Orgagna,” p. 131,
One of his best peeces he wrought in Pisa, which was all sorts of worldly and sensuall Epicures, rioting and banquetting vnder the shaddow of an Orenge tree, within the branches and bowes whereof, sly little Amorettos or Cupids, shooting at sundry Ladies lasciuiously dancing and dallying ”
- A love poem.“Amoretti — a set of sonnets by Edmund Spenser describing his courtship and marriage (1595).”
- A male sweetheart, lover.“What is Life, and the best things in life, with which her Amorettoes and Idolatrous Adorers are so delighted?”