DWARF • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Dwarf

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dwɔrf/ Listen

noun

Dwarf n. (pl. dwarfs)

An animal or plant which is much below the ordinary size of its species or kind.

Especially: A diminutive human being, small in stature due to a pathological condition which causes a distortion of the proportions of body parts to each other, such as the limbs, torso, and head. A person of unusually small height who has normal body proportions is usually called a midget. Note: During the Middle Ages dwarfs as well as fools shared the favor of courts and the nobility.

(Folklore) A small, usually misshapen person, typically a man, who may have magical powers; mythical dwarves were often depicted as living underground in caves. Note: Dwarf is used adjectively in reference to anything much below the usual or normal size; as, a dwarf pear tree; dwarf honeysuckle.

Dwarf elder (Bot.), danewort.

Dwarf wall (Arch.), a low wall, not as high as the story of a building, often used as a garden wall or fence.

verb

Dwarf v. t. (past & past part. dwarfed; pres. part. dwarfing) To hinder from growing to the natural size; to make or keep small; to stunt. "Even the most common moral ideas and affections... would be stunted and dwarfed, if cut off from a spiritual background."

Dwarf v. i. To become small; to diminish in size. "Strange power of the world that, the moment we enter it, our great conceptions dwarf."

See images of 'Dwarf'

Etymology of 'Dwarf'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Dwarf" Quotes from Famous Books

... such a figure should not to a certain extent dwarf others; but Rabelais, unlike some modern character-mongers, never lets his psychology interfere with his story. After a few episodes, the chief of which is the great sign-duel of Thaumast and Panurge himself, the campaign against the Dipsodes at once enables Pantagruel to display ...

— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... of fire on the slopes had been increasing fast, and the assailants found much shelter there among the dwarf pines and cedars. Bullets were pattering all over the valley. Several of the Winchesters had been slain in the early firing, and they lay where they had fallen. Others were wounded, but they bound up their own hurts and used their rifles, whenever they could ...

— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... used in the experiment are Meiling, Nanking, and an unnamed variety carried under the accession number 7916. The last variety is characterized by dwarf, heavy-bearing trees that mature their crops very early in the fall, whereas Meiling and Nanking are vigorous, fast-growing varieties that mature their nuts in midseason. In the early spring of 1948 thirty-six two-year-old grafted trees were planted 25 feet apart in the orchard ...

— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... a story that I found in an old German poem called the Nibelungenlied. The poem is full of strange adventure, adventure of both tiny dwarf and stalwart mortal. ...

— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor

... Messianic dreams. In the century that was over, strange figures had appeared of prophets and martyrs and Hebrew visionaries. From obscurity and the far East came David Reubeni, journeying to Italy by way of Nubia to obtain firearms to rid Palestine of the Moslem—a dark-faced dwarf, made a skeleton by fasts, riding on his white horse up to the Vatican to demand an interview, and graciously received by Pope Clement. In Portugal—where David Reubeni, heralded by a silken standard worked with the Ten Commandments, had been received by the King with an answering pageantry of banners ...

— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

More quotes...