dwarfette

English

Etymology

From dwarf +‎ -ette.

Noun

dwarfette (plural dwarfettes)

1. (dated) A human female with dwarfism.
   • 1955, Tennessee Williams, letter dated 17 July 1955, printed in Five O'Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948-1982 (1990), page 121:

     I’ve just come from the bull-fight, a very good one, so tense at one point that I had to wash down a pinkie with a great gulp of Scotch in my little flask, am now half in and half out of the conscious world. It is pretty good here. All the little black dwarfettes are still scuttling about, and a few hunch-backs, and the gigolo with the great melting eyes and tiny mustache is paying flattering court, all but drinking champagne from my slipper.

   • 1995, Adam Barrow, Flawless‎, page 87:

     She's a spindly twig of a girl, dwarfette, stands about even with his joystick, about the same looks department as Bridget, sub-basement.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:dwarfette.

   Synonym: dwarfess

2. (informal, by extension) A woman of somewhat short stature, or one who seems small in relation to something larger.
   • 1997, Jessica Maxwell, Femme d'Aadventure: Travel Tales from Inner Montana to Outer Mongolia‎, page 176:

     This is their [the humpback whales'] breeding season, their calving season too, and they've got enough problems with all the boat and plane and jet ski traffic around Maui without some ridiculous dwarfette water-nerd with terrible eyesight and silly black chicken feet snorkeling around in their bedroom.

   • 2004, Vicente Leñero (trans. Lorna Scott Fox & Rubén Gallo), "La Diana", The Mexico City Reader (ed. Rubén Gallo), page 152:

     All this thanks to her [the statue's] towering stature: nine feet high, practically twice the average height of our national dwarfettes.

   • 2007, Kathleen Bacus, Calamity Jayne and the Campus Caper‎, page 203:

     No friggin' way was Dixie the dwarfette going to defeat Tressa Jayne Turner, rodeo queen.

3. (fantasy) A female of the dwarf race.
   • 2008, Michael Pastore, “The Grapes of Roth”, in The Zorba Anthology of Love Stories‎, page 266:

     Her outstanding feature was her nose, an enormous pyramid-shaped nose which reminded me of clowns, gargoyles, dwarfettes, cartoon gnomes.

   • 2009, Chris Evans, The Light of Burning Shadows‎, page 153:

     Yimt smiled up at him. "I'm happily married, remember? And even if I was unhappily married, dwarfettes take marital vows seriously. Did you know they don't wear a wedding ring? Chafes their finger when swinging an axe, which, as it happens, is the traditional marriage gift a mother gives her daughter."

   • 2011, Marianne Mancusi, Night School‎, page 193:

     “I’m so sorry. Your Majesty,” he blubbers. “Please don’t put me in the stocks, I beg of you. I have three little dwarfettes at home and I was only trying to do my job!”

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:dwarfette.

   Synonyms: dwarfess, dwarfmaid, dwarrowdam