DWARF • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Dwarf

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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."

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Etymology of 'Dwarf'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Dwarf" Quotes from Famous Books

... kitchen-garden is water: during hot weather completely saturate the ground with it. July is not a very brisk month in the Children's Kitchen-garden; however, seeds of such useful salads as lettuce and radish may still be sown; and a few dwarf French beans can be put in if there is sufficient room. By sowing a small quantity of the early sorts of peas, it is just possible to obtain a fair crop, and particularly so if the ...

— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... who wrote in the eighteenth; to compare their advantages with his, their circumstances with his: and then, if possible, to make them ashamed of their unmanliness. Have you young poets of this day, your struggles, your chagrins? Do you think the hump-backed dwarf, every moment conscious at once of his deformity and his genius—conscious, probably, of far worse physical shame than any deformity can bring, "sewed up in buckram every morning, and requiring ...

— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... Satyrs, and but rarely mentions. The dwarf Miming, who lives in the desert, has a precious sword of sharpness (Mistletoe?) that could even pierce skin-hard Balder, and a ring (Draupnir) that multiplied itself for its possessor. He is trapped by the hero and ...

— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... height to the centre of the principal dome. The room is divided into three parts by two ranges of eight elegant Ionic pillars, so disposed that each may form a separate apartment; the central part being lighted by a superb dome, supported on 16 dwarf columns of scagliola marble, corresponding with the exterior design of the tower. The style of the whole room is that of chaste and classic beauty: the light is tastefully introduced into the extreme sections of the great room by concealed skylights, and through stained glass in the panels ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... a little city, but it is now all destroyed, and now is there but a little village. That city took Joshua by miracle of God and commandment of the angel, and destroyed it, and cursed it and all them that bigged it again. Of that city was Zaccheus the dwarf that clomb up into the sycamore tree for to see our Lord, because he was so little he might not see him for the people. And of that city was Rahab the common woman that escaped alone with them of her lineage: and she often-time refreshed and fed ...

— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown

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