Can someone explain how I was being mean?

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So, recently a friend came to (Jennifer) me and told me that a former friend (Sarah) came to her and told her that I was rude to her. Jennifer told me that I come off as unintentionally rude often, and that I should try to be kinder to people, then she gave me this example:

The situation she gave was that once we were all talking at lunch about the difference between "beautiful, cute, pretty, drop dead gorgeous, and sexy". When were talking about it I said "yeah and Sarah is cute." and then Sarah said to me "How am I cute". I said something to the affect of "I'd choose cute for you, you'd be best described as cute." Then Sarah made a face (it didn't register at the time but it does not looking back). I said this because Sarah has a cute look- she's small with very round feminine features, I thought I was giving her a compliment. So apparently, after this conversation Sarah went back to Jennifer and told her that she was highly insulted and hurt that I called her cute instead of the other options. She told Jennifer that she should consider not hanging out with me because I was always so patronizing. When I asked Jennifer why she thought it was rude she said because "there are different levels of beauty and Sarah thought you were calling her unattractive."

I'm really upset, because I truly thought I was giving Sarah a compliment. Was Jennifer right? Was what I said really that rude, and how can I stop saying things like this in future?

All those words mean the same thing, but because the three of you were talking about the differences between those words, maybe cute got decided as the "least" or something, and Sarah might have thought you were using that purposefully to express that she isn't that attractive.

So the timing was wrong, more than anything. If you hadn't have been talking about the differences between those words at the time, then Sarah probably would have took cute as a compliment, as cute is just as flattering as the other words.

There are so many different reasons she could be offended with being called cute.
People used to do it to me all the time and I found it super boring/slightly annoying because it was so frequent.

Here: http://thoughtcatalog.com/ari-eastman/2 ... lled-cute/

In response to your friend, just apologise and say you didn't realise it had upset them and that you were just trying to be nice.