cute vs kawaii

cute

adj
  • Lovable, charming, attractive or pleasing, especially in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way. 

  • Evincing cleverness; surprising in its elegance or unconventionality (but of limited importance). 

  • Mentally keen or discerning (See also acute) 

  • Possessing physical features, behaviors, personality traits or other properties that are mainly attributed to infants and small or cuddly animals; e.g. fair, dainty, round, and soft physical features, disproportionately large eyes and head, playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity or shyness, innocence, affectionate behavior. 

  • Sexually attractive or pleasing; gorgeous. 

  • Affected or contrived to charm; mincingly clever; precious; cutesy. 

kawaii

adj
  • Cute, adorable. 

noun
  • The quality of being kawaii; cuteness. 

  • Cute items, especially from Japan. 

How often have the words cute and kawaii occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )