LILLIPUTIAN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Lilliputian mean? 

• LILLIPUTIAN (noun)
  The noun LILLIPUTIAN has 2 senses:

1. a very small person (resembling a Lilliputian)

2. a 6-inch tall inhabitant of Lilliput in a novel by Jonathan Swift

  Familiarity information: LILLIPUTIAN used as a noun is rare.

• LILLIPUTIAN (adjective)
  The adjective LILLIPUTIAN has 3 senses:

1. tiny; relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Lilliput

2. very small

3. (informal) small and of little importance

  Familiarity information: LILLIPUTIAN used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LILLIPUTIAN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A very small person (resembling a Lilliputian)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("lilliputian" is a kind of...):

small person (a person of below average size)

Derivation:

lilliputian (very small)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A 6-inch tall inhabitant of Lilliput in a novel by Jonathan Swift

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Instance hypernyms:

character; fictional character; fictitious character (an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story))

Derivation:

Lilliputian (tiny; relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Lilliput)

• LILLIPUTIAN (adjective)

Comparative: Lilliputianer    / lilliputianer   
Superlative: Lilliputianest    / lilliputianest   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tiny; relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Lilliput

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

the Lilliputian population

Pertainym:

Lilliput (a land imagined by Jonathan Swift that was inhabited by tiny people)

Derivation:

Lilliput (a land imagined by Jonathan Swift that was inhabited by tiny people)

Lilliputian (a 6-inch tall inhabitant of Lilliput in a novel by Jonathan Swift)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Very small

Synonyms:

bantam; diminutive; flyspeck; lilliputian; midget; petite; tiny

Context example:

the flyspeck nation of Bahrain moved toward democracy

Similar:

little; small (limited or below average in number or quantity or magnitude or extent)

Derivation:

lilliputian (a very small person (resembling a Lilliputian))

Sense 3

Meaning:

(informal) small and of little importance

Synonyms:

fiddling; footling; lilliputian; little; niggling; petty; picayune; piddling; piffling; trivial

Context example:

giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction

Similar:

unimportant (not important)

Domain usage:

colloquialism (a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech)

 Context examples 

I reflected what a mortification it must prove to me, to appear as inconsiderable in this nation, as one single Lilliputian would be among us.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The reader may please to observe, that, in the last article of the recovery of my liberty, the emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 Lilliputians.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

For the Lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting them on the public.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and half, more or less: their geese about the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards till you come to the smallest, which to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed contempt for that of their neighbour; yet our emperor, standing upon the advantage he had got by the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to deliver their credentials, and make their speech, in the Lilliputian tongue.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

For, since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)