dwarfish

English

Alternative forms

• dwarvish

Etymology

From dwarf +‎ -ish.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

dwarfish (comparative more dwarfish, superlative most dwarfish)

1. Like a dwarf; being especially small or stunted.
   • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:

     […] now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief.

   • 1757, Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Section XXIV, in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, London: John C. Nimmo, 1887, Volume I, p. 242,

     Besides the extraordinary great in every species, the opposite to this, the dwarfish and diminutive, ought to be considered. Littleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty.

   • 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold-Bug‎:

     The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish.

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde‎:

     Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation […]

   • 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter I, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:

     There were the Rougiers, for instance, an old, ragged, dwarfish couple who plied an extraordinary trade.

2. Of, pertaining to, or made by or for dwarves.

   Dwarfish axes are some of the finest weapons available.

Derived terms

• dwarfishly
• dwarfishness

 

Translations

being especially small

Bulgarian: дребен (dreben), недоразвит (bg) (nedorazvit) Maori: tauhena, tauwhena Polish: karli, karłowaty (pl) Portuguese: anânico (pt)(a)