PIGMY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

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

1. an unusually small individual

2. any member of various peoples having an average height of less than five feet

  Familiarity information: PIGMY used as a noun is rare.

• PIGMY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An unusually small individual

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

pigmy; pygmy

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

small person (a person of below average size)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Any member of various peoples having an average height of less than five feet

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Pigmy; Pygmy

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

small person (a person of below average size)

 Context examples 

Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn't do it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

If it were an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy race in America, but it appears to be a European in a sun-hat.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I looked down upon the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house, as if they had been pigmies and I a giant.

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

I see him yet standing there like a pigmy out of the Arabian Nights before the huge front of some malignant genie.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

His strong loose hands clench themselves, in his earnestness; and he emphasizes what he says with a right arm that shows, in my pigmy view, like a sledge-hammer.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was equally confounded at the sight of so many pigmies, for such I took them to be, after having so long accustomed mine eyes to the monstrous objects I had left.

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

Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)