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More "Diminutive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the perjuries I suppose at which Jove laughs!' said Cicely getting up, and hastily rearranging her short curls with the help of various combs, before the only diminutive looking-glass the farm sitting-room provided. 'However, we shall see what happens. I have no doubt Miss Daisy has arranged the proposal scene for this very afternoon. We shall be in for the last act of ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... name) this is not the true account. The full history of the name is too long to give here, but the short account is this—"The old name was Prime Rolles—or primerole. Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr., primeverole: It., primaverola, diminutive of prima vera from flor di prima vera, the first spring flower. Primerole, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into primerolles, and this into primrose."—DR. PRIOR. The name Primrose was not at first always applied to the flower, but was ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... in Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779: he was a diminutive but precocious child, and was paraded by his father and mother, who were people in humble life, as a reciter of verse; and as an early rhymer also. His first poem was printed in a Dublin magazine, when he was fourteen years old. In 1794 he entered Trinity ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of the country, the peasants, were not quite so free as when Rurik landed. They began to be known as moujik, a contemptuous diminutive of the word mouj or man, literally manikin. The merchants or gosti did not form a distinct class, but in larger cities, such as Novgorod and Kief, they had a voice in the administration. These cities had a vetche or municipal council which directed the city's business ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... of, and as Halicarnassus was fortunately absent for a few days, I prospected on the farm. A sunny little corner on a southern slope smiled up at me, and seemed to offer itself as a delightful situation for the diminutive garden which mine must be. The soil, too, seemed as fine and mellow as could be desired. I at once captured an Englishman from a neighboring plantation, hurried him into my corner, and bade him dig me and hoe me and plant me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the man. She was very small and slenderly made, with dark hair, luminous eyes, and ivory-white complexion, a sensitive nose and mouth, a wisp of nerves and passion. She carried her head high and, for so diminutive a person, appeared ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... its cause something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not? Is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and diminutive extension? ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... shirt-sleeves and wearing a diminutive apron to which clung a fluff of turkey feathers, ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... higher and a trifle askew as he surveyed them. The reflected grandeur of past days was on him, and in comparison modernity seemed common-place. All these brilliant, dashing, elegant men and women of his youth were gone. He was the only human echo left of their greatness, and his diminutive person grew more erect as he realized his importance as a ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the south of Barbary, differ in several respects from their brethren in the north. They are rather diminutive in person, and besides the want of beard already noticed, have in general an effeminate tone of voice. They are, however, active and enterprising. They possess rather more of the social qualities than the other tribes; appear to be susceptible of strong attachments and friendships, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... talking, Aby," said a diminutive gentleman, with a Roman nose and generally antique visage; "you must do the best you can for yourself, and get your living in a respectable sort of vay. I can't do no more for you, so help ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Marry, but if I were a king, wouldn't I have a long gown of blue velvet, all o'er broidered of seed-pearl, and a cap of cramoisie [crimson velvet], with golden broidery! And a summer jack [the garment of which jacket is the diminutive] of samitelle would I have—let me see—green, I reckon, bound with gold ribbon; and fair winter hoods of miniver and ermine, and buttons of gold by the score. Who so bravely apparelled as ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... spray of finest, powdered quick-silver, and no sooner reached the little plain, than 'twas gathered into a tiny channel, by which it sped with great velocity to the middle of the plain, where it formed a diminutive lake, like the fishponds that townsfolk sometimes make in their gardens, when they have occasion for them. The lake was not so deep but that a man might stand therein with his breast above the water; ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... experience of the art of finding gold to enable a man to fix on a good site for commencing operations. There are of course instances of wonderful luck and unexpected success, but they are very much the exception, and form but a diminutive proportion of the fortune of any gold diggings. We hear of the man who has found a big nugget and made a fortune, but nothing of the thousands who don't find any big nuggets, and earn but ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... was reached. Thousands of these taxis and similar vehicles were parked along its broad flanks, while literal swarms of diminutive individuals circulated to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... diminutive windows at the throng of life in the unquiet streets as they halted for the passing of a camel laden with bricks and stones from a demolished building; the poor thing teetered precariously past under such a back-breaking ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... factor cannot enter into an explanation of this illusion; but the experiments of which I have just spoken seem to point plainly to a very intimate relation between this illusion and the illusions in our judgments of time. We have here presented on a diminutive scale the illusions which we see in our daily experience in comparing past with present stretches of time. It is a well-known psychological experience that a filled time appears short in passing, but long in retrospect, while an empty ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... his powers in vain over the details of another period, seeking unsuccessfully for any documents which might allude to the present conspiracy, to enable him to perceive its true meaning, and all that had been attempted against him, when a diminutive man, of an olive complexion, who stooped much, entered the cabinet with a measured step. This was a Secretary of State named Desnoyers. He ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sitting right down on the banquette, as do the Choctaw squaws who sell bay and sassafras and life-everlasting, with a high, close board-fence shutting out of view the diminutive garden on the southern side. An ancient willow droops over the roof of round tiles, and partly hides the discolored stucco, which keeps dropping off into the garden as though the old cafe was stripping for the plunge ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... expressed by adding ben or ken or adin (a verb meaning to be above) for the comparative, and apuedi for the diminutive. Ubura, from the verb uburau to be before in time, and adiki, from adikin to be after in time, are also used for the same purpose. The superlative has to be expressed by a circumlocution; as tumaqua aditu ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... Chapters III and IV, openings of considerable size so located in the face of the outer wall as to unfit them for use as doorways, and others whose size is wholly inadequate, but which are still provided with the typical though diminutive single-paneled door. Many of these small openings, occurring most frequently in the back walls of house rows, have the jambs, lintels, etc., characteristic of the typical modern door. However, as ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and might be converted into an elegant place of worship; but it is indifferently contrived for that sort of idolatry which is performed in it at present: the grandeur of the fane gives a diminutive effect to the little painted divinities that are adorned in it, and the company, on a ball-night, must look like an assembly of fantastic fairies, revelling by moonlight among the columns ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of the admonition, suffered himself to be led by the child; and together they passed slowly out into the living room, through the kitchen, and thence into the diminutive rose garden, the pride ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... from the clutches of Austria in 1746 by means of a popular riot, during which the aristocracy considerately looked the other way, only to fall into an even more embarrassed and unheroic position vis-a-vis of so diminutive an opponent as Corsica. The whole story is a curious prototype of the nineteenth century imbroglio between Spain and Cuba. Of commonplaces about the palaces fruitful of verbiage in Addison and Gray, who says with perfect truth, "I should make you sick of marble were I to tell you how it is lavished ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... talking for twenty minutes." I was now presented to Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, also old, also charming, in widow's dress no less in the bloom of age than Mrs. Gregory, but whiter and very diminutive. She shyly welcomed me to Kings Port. "Take him home with you, Julia. We pulled your bell three times, and it's too damp for you to be out. Don't forget," Mrs. Gregory said to me, "that you haven't told me a word about your Aunt Carola, and that I shall expect you to come and do it." She ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... in use to-day. It was an adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon 'wyrm,' meaning a dragon or snake; or from the Gothic 'waurms,' a serpent; or the Icelandic 'ormur,' or the German 'wurm.' We gather that it conveyed originally an idea of size and power, not as now in the diminutive of both these meanings. Here legendary history helps us. We have the well-known legend of the 'Worm Well' of Lambton Castle, and that of the 'Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh' near Bamborough. In both these legends the 'worm' was a monster of vast size and power—a veritable dragon ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... boxes and I must confess that, as my eye traveled along the rows of impassive faces and noted the perfect though diminutive features, the tiny ears, the bristling hair, the frowning eyebrows—so discordant with the placid expression and peacefully closed eyes—a chill of horror crept over me. The whole thing was so unreal, so unnatural, so suggestive ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... war-cry of 'nein, nein, nein,' sprang at him like a little tiger, and by the fierceness of her gestures and the volubility of her German jargon actually compelled him to retreat step by step until she had him outside the door, which she barred with her diminutive person. No one could help laughing at the discomfited giant and the mite of a child facing him so bravely, while she scolded at the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Prefect of the Congregation should be called the "Red Pope," for how limitless were the powers of that man of conquest and domination, whose hands stretched from one to the other end of the earth. Allowing that the Cardinal Secretary held Europe, that diminutive portion of the globe, did not he, the Prefect, hold all the rest—the infinity of space, the distant countries as yet almost unknown? Besides, statistics showed that Rome's uncontested dominion was limited to 200 millions of Apostolic and Roman Catholics; whereas the schismatics ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... you dare!" screamed Rosette, drawing himself up to the fullest height his diminutive figure would allow. "You shall answer for your conduct before a court ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... to give you confidence," said he. Feeling in the breast pocket of his laced satin waistcoat, he drew forth a diminutive pistol—a delicate toy, with a pattern of silver foliated over the butt. "It is loaded," he explained, "and primed; though it cannot go off unless you pull back the trigger. At close quarters it can be pretty deadly. Do ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and life. Beyond this Ch'ang Men was a street called Shih-li-chieh (Ten Li street); in this street a lane, the Jen Ch'ing lane (Humanity and Purity); and in this lane stood an old temple, which on account of its diminutive dimensions, was called, by general consent, the Gourd temple. Next door to this temple lived the family of a district official, Chen by surname, Fei by name, and Shih-yin by style. His wife, nee Feng, possessed a worthy ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Within the last three weeks he has already reached p. 94 of Vol. I, and here the weather, having suddenly become tropical, the Baron felt that his mighty brain "whirled, swam to a giddiness, and subsided." He has been stopped occasionally en route; he had come into view of "the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum." Then he retraced his steps, puzzled a bit, but after a "modest quencher" Swivellerian libation, he hit upon a luminous passage which warned him "in plain speech"—and whose is plainer than GEORGE MEREDITH's?—"that the Bacchus of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... this idea of the seat of magnetic influence, together with the construction of the compass-box, the division of the card into eight principal points, and each of these again subdivided into three, the manner of suspending the needle, and its diminutive size, seldom exceeding in length three quarters of an inch, are all of them strong presumptions of its being an original, and not a ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... wet season, a diminutive orchid, the roots, tuber, leaf, and flower of which may be easily covered by the glass of a lady's watch, springs upon exposed shoulders of the hills. So far it has not been recorded for any other part of Australia, or, indeed, the world. Science ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of a girl. 'Twas a year of grace indeed, for the little stranger happened to be none other than Anne Oldfield, whose elegance of manner, charm of voice and action and loveliness of face would in time make her the most delightful comedienne of her day. Perhaps she found no instant welcome, this diminutive maiden who came smiling into existence laden with a message from the sunshine; her father was richer in ancestry than guineas, and the arrival of another daughter may have seemed an honour hardly worth the bestowal.[A] But Thalia ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... but vastly comfortable parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... look, therefore, for a large amount or variety of animal life in the Ecuadorian forests. Time was when colossal megatheroids, mastodons, and glyptodons browsed on the foliage of the Andes and the Amazon; but now the terrestrial mammals of this tropical region are few and diminutive. They are likewise old-fashioned, inferior in type as well as bulk to those of the eastern hemisphere, for America was a finished continent long before Europe. "It seems most probable (says Darwin) that the North ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Gaining his diminutive cabin, Schwalbe by sheer force of habit consulted the aneroid. The mercury was falling rapidly. Since he last looked, barely two hours previously, it had dropped 764 to 734 millimetres, or an inch and two-tenths. That meant that the anti-cyclone was rapidly breaking up, and that a ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... (Clotho Durandi, LATR.), in memory of him who first called attention to this particular Spider. To enter on eternity under the safe-conduct of a diminutive animal which saves us from speedy oblivion under the mallows and rockets is no contemptible advantage. Most men disappear without leaving an echo to repeat their name; they lie buried in ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... pocket a diminutive vial, the smallest I had ever seen, in which were a number of little white granules, about the size of the head of a pin. A printed label was wound around the vial, and it bore the word "Arsenicum." It passed from hand to hand, and all ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... since, they never wished to change, as they had no children. That of course made a great difference. I never should have thought it possible for two human beings to have existed, much less been comfortable, in such a diminutive place. Another cottage I know contains but one room altogether, which is about eight feet square; it is inhabited by a solitary old woman, and looks like a toy-house. One or two such places as these may be found in most villages, but it does not by any ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... from which so large a plant was known to grow. There were, perhaps, smaller seeds, but the plants which sprung from them were not so great; and there were greater plants, but the seeds from which they sprung were not so small." Edersheim (i, p. 593) states that the diminutive size of the mustard seed was commonly used in comparison by the rabbis, "to indicate the smallest amount such as the least drop of blood, the least defilement, etc." The same author continues, in speaking of the grown plant: "Indeed, it looks no longer like a ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Ic.3: Can this cockpit hold] Shakespeare probably calls the stage a cockpit, as the most diminutive enclosure present ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... different and superior qualities been combined in one woman. She had great personal beauty; her brow and eye were remarkable. Although small in stature, it is said of her as it was of Channing, he too being of diminutive size, that she made you think she was larger than she was. She had a look of command. The amount of will force and intelligent power in her small body was enough to direct the universe; yet she was modest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... on the Big Sur River, one of the little boys called to his mother that there was a funny sort of a "big dog" out in the pasture. His mother paid no attention to it, but a diminutive pet black and tan started an assault on the animal in question. The lion and the dog disappeared in the brush. Presently the canine barking ceased and the small boy wondered what had become of his valiant ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... the men on horseback, so as to fit them for use against the Spanish cavalry, if we should go against Havana in December. We had, all of us, eyed the captured Spanish cavalry with particular interest. The men were small, and the horses, though well trained and well built, were diminutive ponies, very much smaller than cow ponies. We were certain that if we ever got a chance to try shock tactics against them they would go down like nine-pins, provided only that our men could be trained to charge in any kind of line, and ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... did not seem that the tug made much impression on the New York. Apart from the serious nature of the accident, it made an irresistibly comic picture to see the huge vessel drifting down the dock with a snorting tug at its heels, for all the world like a small boy dragging a diminutive puppy down the road with its teeth locked on a piece of rope, its feet splayed out, its head and body shaking from side to side in the effort to get every ounce of its weight used to the best advantage. At first all appearance showed that the sterns of the two vessels would collide; but ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... the diminutive of plata, silver, to which it appears very similar; platina being a ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... is his influence that almost all the other gods of the pantheon take on some of his character. Whenever and wherever possible, those phases of the god's nature are emphasized which point to the possession of power over enemies. The gods of the Assyrian pantheon impress one as diminutive Ashurs by the side of the big one, and in proportion as they approach nearer to the character of Ashur himself, is their hold upon ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... alone; Harry Smith, being a swarthy, dark-haired fellow, was "Blacksmith;" and I, Nathaniel Herrick, was dubbed the first day "Poet"—I, who had never made a line in my life— and later on, as I was rather diminutive, the "Gnat." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... him at first with a derisive smile, and this diminutive figure, with his great head, on which a high, black felt hat just kept its position, seemed to amuse him excessively. All at once a thought struck him, and, like an arrow impelled from the bow, he dashed forward and ran after ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... and sensitive boy, began to cry; and his father, who had the pluck of a bull-terrier, wanted to interfere, in spite of his diminutive stature. I was also beside myself with indignation, and pulling off my coat and hat, which I gave to Lintot, made my way to the drayman, who was offering to fight any three men in the crowd, an offer that met with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... night she was sitting in their diminutive parlour,— Hogarth at a table inscribing the association's names received by post that evening; and at last, bending low over her sewing, she said: "Richard, is it true you have been to ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... except by the soldiers. Down between the two ranks, which were formed facing each other, came the Sultan on a white steed—a beautiful Arabian—and having at his side his son, a boy about ten or twelve years old, who was riding a pony, a diminutive copy of his father's mount, the two attended by a numerous body-guard, dressed in gorgeous Oriental uniforms. As the procession passed our carriage, I, as pre-arranged, stood up and took off my hat, His Serene Highness promptly acknowledging ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... is by no means the largest of our herbs. On this point it is necessary to recall and keep in mind the fact that when a given plant is indigenous in a southern climate, the corresponding species or variety that may be found in more northerly latitudes is generally of a comparatively diminutive size. I have seen a mahogany-plant cultivated in a flower-pot, the best representative that could be obtained here of those forest patriarchs in tropical America which constitute the mahogany of commerce. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... some inflated bladders in each end, so as to make the canoe a diminutive lifeboat, in case of an upset or of a hole ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... the woods and Sam's recital from the stump, the three friends emerged again upon the road, and a belated farmer driving home half asleep on the seat of his wagon caught their attention. With the skill of an Indian boy the diminutive Morris sprang upon the wagon and thrust a ten dollar bill into the farmer's hand. "Lead us, O man of the soil!" he shouted, "Lead us to a gilded palace of sin! Take us to a saloon! The life oil gets low ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... of St. Cuthbert's which was his home from his release to his death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... any return. Some of the younger women, though sun-burnt, were handsome; and many of them, from their fanciful dresses, resembled the cottagers as exhibited on the stage. The men, on the other hand, were a most ugly race of beings, diminutive in size, and with the features of an old baboon. Mr. Younge, indeed, in some degree accounted for this, by the information that the best men had been taken ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... cavern formed by overhanging blocks of granite. Deep river pools and deceitful morasses, over which the cotton grass flutters its white tassels, are thought to be the "gates" of their country, where they possess diminutive flocks and herds of their own. Malicious, yet hardly demoniacal, they are precisely Dryden's "spirits of a ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... get it, and commerce hums." Here the doctor was for a moment diverted by some objective impression; and without a word of excuse to the little man, he swung himself into his buggy, which stood waiting, and drove rapidly away; whilst the diminutive man, after a moment of weak indecision, shuffled off down the street. I later learned that these talks of Doctor Castleton's were, as regards the element of verity, thrown off as writers of fiction throw off ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... 8,000, or nearly one-sixth, belong to the first of the two classes, and of these nearly 2,000 are grasses. In cold and temperate climates the species of this most interesting and important family are comparatively diminutive in size. In our climate, for instance, the grasses are somewhat remarkable among vegetables for their humble stature, and their inconspicuous appearance; while in the warmer regions of the earth, the bamboos and canes, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... be broken open again by mechanical means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible signs of witchcraft. By mixing horse-dung with human semen he believed he was able to produce a medium from which, by chemical treatment in a retort, a diminutive human being, or homunculus, as he called it, could be produced. The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air, the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the fire, and the undines of the water, were to him real and ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... have been laid open by her," continued the diminutive priest. "Inert matter is engaged in warlike commotion and she hath brought fire down from the heavens to entertain her. She hath placed our land in such a state of defence that no invader can approach it; she hath brought from over the great black water the amazing 'pom-poms' ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... positions may be avoided. The troops, being placed, immediately proceed to clear the sites of their respective encampments, and wagons are set to work to bring in logs with which huts may be constructed. In about a week thousands of diminutive log houses arise, roofed with the shelter tents of the soldiers, or, when the occupants have sufficient handicraft ability, with rough shingles. Shelters are erected, as far as possible, for the animals, generally being nothing more than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... overcome the jealousy of my otherwise gentle rat when it saw me petting a mouse, and it would watch for an opportunity to spring upon its diminutive rival and put a ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Mars, as she has been called, in compliment to her talent, and with reference to her diminutive stature, held more than one engagement at the Varietes. She has been a great rambler, having acted in Germany, Holland, and Belgium, and visited England as manager of a French company. She married Carmouche, a writer of vaudevilles, has left the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... theologians."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 297. "As to those animals whose use is less common, or who on account of the places which they inhabit, fall less under our observation, as fishes and birds, or whom their diminutive size removes still further from our observation, we generally, in English, employ a single Noun to designate both Genders, Masculine and Feminine."—Fosdick's De Sacy, p. 67. "Adjectives may always be distinguished by their being the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... stored under the stone that had attracted Thor. And this booty still remained—a half-pint of ground-nuts piled carefully in a little hollow lined with moss. They were not really nuts. They were more like diminutive potatoes, about the size of cherries, and very much like potatoes in appearance. They were starchy and sweet, and fattening. Thor enjoyed them immensely, rumbling in that curious satisfied way deep down in his chest as he feasted. And then he ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... thing happened. Instead of running away, the boy took a step forward, and the man paused, scarcely believing his eyes. Another step forward, and yet another, came the diminutive figure, until almost within the aggressor's reach; then suddenly, quick as a cat, it veered, dropped upon all fours to the floor, and head first, scrambling like a rabbit, disappeared into the open mouth of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... out to be a pure Muscular as we had stated. The class member's mistake came from the fact that the acrobat appeared taller than he really was. High platforms always give this illusion. Furthermore his partner in the act was of diminutive height and the acrobat looked tall ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... father of Dona Manuela, known by the affectionate diminutive, Manuelita, throughout the land, and loved and admired by all, even by her father's enemies, for her compassionate disposition. Perhaps she was the one being in the world for whom he, a widower and lonely man, cherished a great tenderness. It is ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... employ thou and thee, and add to these forms of endearment numerous suffixes. Human names, all animals, plants, metals, stones, trees—anything, in fact—can be used in the diminutive form. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... because our things aren't pretty?" she asked Lily, although she really could not conceive of anything more exquisite than the diminutive garments on ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... that ever came to the knowledge and love of Jesus was the old Chief Namakei. We came to live on his land, as it was near our diminutive harbor; and, upon the whole, he and his people were the most friendly, though his only brother, the Sacred Man of the tribe, on two occasions tried to shoot me. Namakei came a good deal about us at the Mission House, and helped us to acquire the language. He discovered ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... men. No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic Church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, but whose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... bottle of good wine, which she fished out of her huge basket. Her protege, made tame by hunger, allowed himself to be treated like a child. First she gave him a very small sip of Burgundy, then a diminutive fragment of cake; and then another sip and another piece of cake—insisting on his eating very slowly. Being perfectly useless, I looked quietly on, and smiled to see the suhmissiveness with which this fine, handsome fellow allowed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... over his brows and took two turns, of three feet long, up and down the room, lifting his legs up very high and setting them down very hard. This pause gave time for Gluck to collect his thoughts a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his diminutive visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his amazement, he ventured on a question of ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... words of a contemporary, "this Anglo-Teutonic, castellated, gothized structure must be considered as an abortive production, at once illustrative of bad taste and defective judgment. From the small size of the windows and the diminutive proportion of its turrets, it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... A thin, undersized man in worn black clothes, and with a somber hat of soft black felt still upon his head, came into the room. His dark hair was tinged with gray, he walked with a pronounced stoop. In his shabby clothes, fitting loosely upon his diminutive body, he should have been an insignificant figure, but somehow or other he was nothing of the sort. His thin lips curved into a discontented droop. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes shone with the brightness of the ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... true that the buildings are of the most primitive, and the furnishings, too. The bureau drawers do stick, and there is only "curtained" closet room, and mirrors are few and diminutive, and orders for hot water have to be given ahead of time, but there is no discomfort, except bathing in the cold! The huge fire, lighted early every morning by one of the guides in each guest house, keeps the main part fairly warm but the temperature of one of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... country. By birth the Leprechawn is of low descent, his father being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy; by nature he is a mischief-maker, the Puck of the Emerald Isle. He is of diminutive size, about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black stockings, and a hat, cocked in the style of a century ago, over a little, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... propagation of their species. Their dimensions now undergo a monstrous change, more especially the queen; her abdomen augments by degrees, and increases to a prodigious size, when compared with her two first stages of existence; and the king, although greatly augmented, yet is diminutive compared to his enormous spouse, who sometimes exceeds three inches in length. She is in this state extremely prolific, and the matrix is almost perpetually yielding eggs, which are taken from her by her attendants, and are carried into the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression, irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are peculiarly magnificent, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... was a loft between the cell occupied by May and the roof of the prison, a loft of such diminutive proportions that a man of average height could not stand upright in it. This loft had neither window nor skylight, and the gloom would have been intense, had not a few faint sun-rays struggled through ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... its head supported by angels, and with two monks holding open books, kneeling at its feet, lies on the upper slab; and underneath is a ghastly figure in a winding-sheet, supposed to represent the archbishop after death; the diminutive figures which originally filled the niches were destroyed by the Puritans, but have been to some extent replaced. The gaudy colours of the tomb enable one to form some idea of the appearance of the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... took his boot in his hands and gave a slight twist to the heel. There was a little click, and a sort of double drawer shot out of the front of the sole. It contained two sheafs of bank notes and a number of diminutive articles, such as a gimlet, a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... gloom, like diminutive goblins that beckon; Onward we stagger and gasp in the grip of this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... deformed, to be one intemperate and unjust, filled with a multitude of desires, a prey to foolish hopes and vexed with idle fears; through its diminutive and avaricious nature the subject of envy; employed solely in thought of what is immoral and low, bound in the fetters of impure delights, living the life, whatever it may be, peculiar to the passion of body; and so totally merged in sensuality as to esteem the base pleasant, and ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... forgotten the money which he believed the boys had found. Now it came back to him with redoubled force. Long years of a roving, reckless life had prepared him for almost every emergency. Taking from his pocket a small folding lantern and a diminutive spirit-lamp, he soon got it in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... come to Headquarters and be identified. He had an ugly looking revolver in his belt, but he submitted very tamely to his temporary arrest. I was taking him off to our Headquarters, where strange officers were often brought for purposes of identification, when a young Highland Captain of diminutive stature, but unbounded dignity, appeared on the scene with four patrol men. He told me that as he was patrolling the roads for the capture of spies, he would take over the custody of my victim. The Canadians were loath ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... school of Athens, which had stood nine hundred years. At that time just seven philosophers were teaching in that school, the shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece—a striking play of history, like the name of the last West-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder of the city and the founder of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it came to pass, that this diminutive letter to Mr. Churchill should understand the business of introducing better than the Introduction itself; or why the Bishop did not take it into his head to send the former into the world some months before the latter; which ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... looking up I saw a young Gy, who might be sixteen years old, standing beside the magistrate and gazing at me with a very benignant countenance. She had not come to her full growth, and was scarcely taller than myself (viz., about feet 10 inches), and, thanks to that comparatively diminutive stature, I thought her the loveliest Gy I had hitherto seen. I suppose something in my eyes revealed that impression, for her countenance grew yet more benignant. "Taee tells me," she said, "that you have not yet learned to accustom ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... afterwards, the poor girl died of love and shame. Two ladies, rivals in fashionable life who tormented one another with a thousand little stings of womanish spite, were given to understand that each of their hearts was a nest of diminutive snakes, which did quite as much ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he was tired and would rather stay by the tent, so Nugget and Clay prepared their rods and went down the creek a short distance to a jutting point of rock. With a diminutive hook they caught a couple of minnows, which ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... Port Jackson are in person rather more diminutive and slighter made, especially about the thighs and legs, than the Europeans. It is doubtful whether their society contained a person of six feet high. The tallest I ever measured, reached five feet eleven inches, and men of his height were rarely seen. Baneelon, who towered above the majority of ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... means Grusha (another form for the diminutive of Agrippina, in Russian Agrafenya). The play ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... a sudden unexpected rush might have put them in possession of the battery. Now, however, nothing in the nature of a surprise could well occur, for by the destruction of the barrack we were enabled to obtain an uninterrupted view from the battery all over the diminutive islet upon which ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to the more diminutive class of midshipmen—those under five feet high, and under seven ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... engaged in the gentle pastime of dragging sacks and branches along the roads; they made so much dust that it might easily have been caused by, say, a cavalry division going to water. Also, thousands of tiny tents sprang up round the bivouac areas, in front of which were equally diminutive soldiers in squads and companies, whose function it was to stand rigidly to attention all day long, and who treated the frequent bombing raids with utter contempt. A careful observer would have noticed a certain woodenness about them, but enemy airmen were profoundly ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... embodying the names of the affianced pair. Thus, for example, in the case of the present engagement of Richard Roe to Dorothy Doe it would be "unique" to have the first course at luncheon consist of a diminutive candy or paper-mache doe seated amorously upon a heart shaped order of a shad roe. The guests will at first be mystified, but soon cries of "Oh, how sweet!" will arise and congratulations are then in order. Great care should be taken, however, ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... piety and reverence for the modest virtues and simple manners of humble life with which they may be contemplated. A man must be very insensible who would not be touched with pleasure at the sight of the chapel of Buttermere, so strikingly expressing, by its diminutive size, how small must be the congregation there assembled, as it were, like one family; and proclaiming at the same time to the passenger, in connection with the surrounding mountains, the depth of that seclusion in which the people live, that has rendered necessary ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... sincerity. In all of these Stephens was proficient. His descriptive powers were remarkable, and he could blend pathos with argument in a manner unusual. He was a warm friend of Mr. Lincoln, and one of the most characteristic stories ever told of Mr. Lincoln is in connection with Governor Stephens' diminutive appearance and great care for his shattered health. On one occasion before the war he took off three overcoats, one after the other, in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, who rose, and walking around him, said, "I was afraid of Stephens, for I thought he might keep on ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... been shrewdly observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or POCKET edition.] I mentioned my doubts to Dr Johnson, who said, he would go two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo. I therefore sent Joseph forward, with the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... ancient lament of Greece, was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithynian Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and Enoch, whose early death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of days of the solar year; a brief space ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Beersheba, the representatives of the public schools had assembled to box, fence, and perform gymnastic prodigies for fame and silver medals. The room was full of all sorts and sizes of them, heavy-weights looking ponderous and muscular, feather-weights diminutive but wiry, light-weights, middle-weights, fencers, and gymnasts in scores, some wearing the unmistakable air of the veteran, for whom Aldershot has no mysteries, others nervous, and wishing themselves ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... knuckle-bones of a sucking-pig, linked together like a chain in its belly. Apart from this it is boneless. Had Aristotle known this, Aristotle who records as a most remarkable phenomenon the fact that the fish known as the small sea-ass alone of all fishes has its diminutive heart placed in its stomach, he would assuredly have ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Mary's Church were large and imposing, the presbytery was old and diminutive. Father Healy had bought the land and the house as it stood on a block beside the one for church and schools, and he had made no attempt to enlarge or ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... to a cessation of hostilities, which might have been followed by a definitive treaty of peace, but the daemon of discord again made its appearance in the tangible shape of a diminutive personage, who, hitherto silently occupying a snug out-of-the-way corner by the fireplace, had ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... clarions drew our eyes to the Place of the Constitution; and, indeed, I had forgotten to say, that that majestic square was filled with military, with exceedingly small firelocks, the men ludicrously young and diminutive for the most part, in a uniform at once cheap and tawdry,—like those supplied to the warriors at Astley's, or from still humbler theatrical wardrobes: indeed, the whole scene was just like that of a little theatre; the houses curiously ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forced to quit Sweden by religious differences. The union of this canton to those of Uri and Unterwald, first suggested that more extended confederacy, so essential to the existence of these diminutive states. ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... was manifested by the most extraordinary daring throughout the entire and unequal contest; but his small force was compelled to surrender with the honors of war. The whole affair reflected credit upon his diminutive force, and upon the young hero who led them. His imprisonment was not without dangers that afforded opportunities of displaying his ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... into his hands; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. "Where did you get this?" said he,—as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell, for whom curiosity had been hunting so eagerly in vain. An explanation ensued, and Mr. Smith at once began to ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... people are weak, pallid, diminutive, stunted," maltreated, "and, apparently, a class apart from other classes in the country. The rich and the great who possess equipages, enjoy the privilege of crushing them or of mutilating them in the streets. . . There is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Clara grew up amidst smiles and love. The very friars showered her with attentions when she appeared in the processions dressed in white, her abundant hair interwoven with tuberoses and sampaguitas, with two diminutive wings of silver and gold fastened on the back of her gown, and carrying in her hands a pair of white doves tied with blue ribbons. Afterwards, she would be so merry and talk so sweetly in her childish simplicity that the enraptured Capitan Tiago ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... two sequestered individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs; while the horse would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution and circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive companion. Thus, by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the vacant hours of the other: so that Milton, when he puts the following sentiment in the mouth of Adam, seems to ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... less pleased; he had expected the traces of resentment, and he was actually disappointed at not finding them. But here was the little house of which his companion had spoken, and it seemed, indeed, a rather bad one. That is, it was one of those diminutive structures which are known at French watering-places as "chalets," and, with an exiguity of furniture, are let for the season to families that pride themselves upon their powers of contraction. This one was ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Names," had not been Scottish, I should have been less surprised at the author's passing over the name of Jock, universally used in Scotland for John. The termination ick or ck is often employed, as marking a diminutive object, or object of endearment. May not the English term Jack, if not directly borrowed from the Scottish Jock, have been formed through ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... should be of booming guns and dying soldiers! The cow-shed contained seven corpses, scarcely yet cold, lying upon their backs, in a row, and fast losing all resemblance to man. The farthest removed, seemed to be a diminutive boy, and I thought if he had a mother, that she might sometime like to speak with me. When I took their names, I thought what terrible agencies I was fulfilling. Beyond my record, falsely spelled, perhaps, they would have no history. And people ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of our Lord's action. But it is also to be considered in the light of the woman's quick-witted retort, which drew out of it an inference which we cannot suppose that Christ did not intend. He uses a diminutive for 'dogs,' which shows that He is not thinking of the fierce, unclean animals, masterless and starving, that still haunt Eastern cities, and deserve their bad character, but of domestic pets, who live with the household, and are near the table. In fact, the woman seized His intention ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... absolutely empty, and the ocean, beyond acres of slippery seaweed, looked very far away. She has everything that a properly appointed station de bains should have, but everything is on a Lilliputian scale. The whole place looked like a huge Nueremburg toy. There is a diminutive hotel, in which, properly, the head waiter should be a pigmy and the chambermaid a sprite, and beside it there is a Casino on the smallest possible scale. Everything about the Casino is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... certain that it would be easier to march such a line against the enemy than if deployed; but these diminutive columns of sixty skirmishers and one hundred and eighty men in the ranks would never present the same order and solidity as a single column of a battalion. Still as the system has some advantages, it deserves a trial; and, indeed, it has already been practiced ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... of his consciousness. He would have said that he "had his traps set for an idea and was watching them." Generally he was watching his traps with a look of dreamy contemplation. He, too, wore no coat or waistcoat. His calico shirt was decorated with diminutive roses in pink ink. His ready tied necktie was very red and fastened on his collar button with an elastic loop. A nugget of free gold which, he loved to explain, had come from the Rocky Mountains and had ten dollars' worth of the root of ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... The diminutive Duc de Fronsac never failed, when he came to pay his respects to the Queen at her toilet, to turn the conversation upon Trianon, in order to make some ironical remarks on my father-in-law, of whom, from the time of his appointment, he always spoke as "my colleague Campan." The ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Winchilsea, is not a commanding figure in history, but she is an isolated and a well-defined one. She is what one of the precursors of Shakespeare calls "a diminutive excelsitude." She was entirely out of sympathy with her age, and her talent was hampered and suppressed by her conditions. She was the solitary writer of actively developed romantic tastes between Marvell and Gray, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... that diminutive hunchback seemed then that which he was in reality,—a giant, who was to stir the world to its foundations and gather ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to render himself thoroughly independent, or, more likely still, to surround his diminutive individuality with an air of mystery—had abandoned his birth-place, and established himself about two miles away from it, near a singularly-formed sandstone rock, situated in a small but exceedingly pretty fir-wood, and commonly known ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Minister Plenipotentiary in Poland. The street crowds stopped the cars and lifted the Frenchman on to their shoulders and carried them to plaudits and joy-shrieks and brass bands. It was amusing to see a diminutive French officer with grey head and beard, sprawling thus on a moving couch of Polish hands whilst he waved his hat and was pelted from all hands with cowslips and lilac. "Vive la France! Vive la France!" Polish Cossacks with white pennants on their lances come trotting ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... was a group, which all recognized at a glance. "Perfect! Just as if he had seen it! Think! he could make it, when he was only so long at the time!" exclaimed Oke, his fingers indicating a most diminutive baby. There was no contempt, but unlimited admiration, in this ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... some little trouble in starting, for his dogs, in their joy at seeing him, gave expression to it in their own peculiar way. A big Muskymote knocked down a little Corbeau and straightway began to worry it, while a Chocolat did the same with a diminutive tete-noire. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... began the girl, but she did not finish. The little figure before her drew itself to the full extent of its diminutive height. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... intervals, engaged in the gentle pastime of dragging sacks and branches along the roads; they made so much dust that it might easily have been caused by, say, a cavalry division going to water. Also, thousands of tiny tents sprang up round the bivouac areas, in front of which were equally diminutive soldiers in squads and companies, whose function it was to stand rigidly to attention all day long, and who treated the frequent bombing raids with utter contempt. A careful observer would have noticed a certain woodenness ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... altogether without foundation in fact; for the people of the neighbouring townships used to assemble and perform what was called the Hekalesian sacrifice to Zeus Hekalus, and they also used to honour Hekale, calling her by the affectionate diminutive Hekaline, because she also, when feasting Theseus, who was very young, embraced him in a motherly way, and used such like endearing diminutives. She also made a vow on Theseus's behalf, when he was going forth ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... meaning.—In the word hillock there is the simple expression of comparative smallness in size. In the word doggie for dog, lassie for lass, the addition of the -ie makes the word not so much a diminutive as a term of tenderness or endearment. The idea of smallness, accompanied, perhaps, with that of neatness, generally carries with it the idea of approbation; hence, the word clean in English, means, in German, ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... usually, supper was hot, and Tom arrived through the front gateway, glancing at the flower-bed in the centre of the diminutive grass plot, carrying his dinner-pail, having divested himself of his grimy, greasy blouse and overalls at the great repair shops, where his engine had already begun, with much panting, ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... twenty, and she was generally recognised as the prettiest girl to be seen at Mass in the small, ugly chapel down beyant near Ballybrosna. Some people, it is true, said that she was "just a fairy of a crathur, and too little for anythin'," and she was, no doubt, diminutive in size. Nor had she any brilliancy of colouring to make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, with her dark eyes and hair, one of those filmy white blossoms which look the paler ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the under part of auld boots cut from the legs. As to his face, lo, and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... denied. I instantly resolved to take advantage of this overture on the part of Count Ofalia, and to call on him myself. I therefore caused a copy of the Gospel to be handsomely bound, and proceeding to the palace, was instantly admitted to him. He is a dusky, diminutive person, between fifty and sixty years of age, with false hair and teeth, but exceedingly gentlemanly manners. He received me with great affability, and thanked me for my present; but on my proceeding to speak of the New Testament, he told me that the subject was surrounded with difficulties, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... There might be found the gentlemen of fashion and of means, with their great three-cornered cocked hats, resting majestically upon their profusely powdered hair done up in cues, their light colored coats, with their diminutive capes and long backs, their striped stockings, pointed shoes, and lead-laden cuffs, paying homage to the fair ladies of the town. These, too, were gorgeous in their brocades and taffetas, luxuriantly displayed over cumbrous hoops, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... the contrary, we were concerned to discover the best method of continuing the war. We knew, I need scarcely say, that humanly speaking ultimate victory for us was out of the question—that had been clear from the very beginning. For how could our diminutive army hope to stand against the overwhelming numbers at the enemy's command? Yet we had always felt that no one is worthy of the name of man who is not ready to vindicate the right, be the odds what they may. We knew also, that the Afrikanders, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... new prayer to say," announced Celia, flashing into the hall, a diminutive apparition, white-clad, with twinkling pink feet. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the chef? Well, if Monsieur Boulederouloue weighed twice as much as M. Jasmin, the latter certainly weighed twice as much as Monsieur Perigord. Diminutive and meagre to a degree, the master of the kitchen possessed a mighty soul, and was endowed with an energy of purpose that must have made him first and foremost in any sphere of life; but fate had ordained that he should only be the first and ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... little uncertain, it may be most convenient to introduce it here. It must have been written before 1833, but how much earlier there are no means of determining. I give it as a specimen of the remarkable poetical talent shown in the various diminutive writings of this time; at least, in all of them which I have ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... out to the little craft in the offing, and found in the diminutive cabin eight FIRST-CLASS NEGRO passengers, while in the vessel's hold, reclining upon the cargo, were four white men who were voyaging SECOND class. The cordage of the little craft was rotten, and the sails nearly worn out, yet all these people were cheerful, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... westward, had it been possible, was now useless, as there was neither hill nor rising ground of any kind within the compass of our view, which was only bounded by the horizon in every quarter, entirely devoid of timber except a few diminutive gums on the very edge of the stream, might be so termed. The water in the bed of the lagoon, as it might now be properly denominated, was stagnant; its breadth about twenty feet, and the heads of grass growing in it, shewed it to ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... themselves, by some lonesome impulse, into communities. Primarily, of course, these groupings are ethnological, these cities within a city being originally created largely by the timidity of strangers in a strange land. There are little Italys, and Chinatowns, and diminutive Bohemias, all swung together by the action of this great centripetal force of loneliness. The buildings in these communities, inflexible enough in all conscience as regards design, contrive none the less to take on in some way a character and appearance peculiar to their ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... fresh fish, and dried and unfresh, and the vendors thereof. There were many kinds of so-called fresh fish, but the most were dried, to mere skin and bone, sharks and sprats, piled in baskets or hanging in bundles. Diminutive wrinkled women sat on little bits of wet mat in rows, and chopped the "fresh" fish into little morsels with little choppers by the light of little cruisie oil lamps, that flickered and smoked beside them, and lit up their puckered little chocolate faces, glinted on their teeth and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... kindly offered to lend me his donkey, upon which to ascend the mountain. Never having been upon the back of one of these long eared animals, I felt some hesitation about trusting myself upon so diminutive looking a creature. But being assured that if I would only resign myself to his care and let him have his own way, I would be perfectly safe, I mounted, and off we set. We had, however, scarcely gone fifty rods, when, in passing over a narrow part of the path and overlooking ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the story of Cinderella. The cynic might imagine that it was the diminutive size of her foot that insured her success. The child does not realize any advantage in this, but, though the matter need not be pressed, the story leaves us with the impression that Cinderella had been patient and industrious, and forbearing with her sisters. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... first question every stranger asks is the reason. You are told that they are married in infancy, that they begin to bear children by the time they are 12 and 14 years old, and consequently do not have time to grow; and perhaps that is the correct explanation for the diminutive stature of the women of India. There are exceptions. You see a few stalwart amazons, but ninety per cent or more of the sex are under size. Perhaps there is another reason, which does not apply to the upper classes, and that is ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... greatly excited when the dogs appeared on the scene. We also saw a tiny crocodile, only a month old, in an earthenware pan, which snapped and hissed and flapped his tail, and was altogether as angry as any creature of his diminutive size could well be, making it quite clear that only the power—not the will—to eat us all up was wanting. There are many crocodiles in these lakes and streams, and they occasionally carry incautious people off, especially ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... be inveigled into occupying a temporary position on Mrs Boffin's lap. It was not until he had been piqued into competition with the two diminutive Minders, by seeing them successively raised to that post and retire from it without injury, that he could be by any means induced to leave Mrs Betty Higden's skirts; towards which he exhibited, even when in Mrs Boffin's embrace, strong yearnings, spiritual ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... dyed a richer hue from the blood flowing from the warrior's shoulder, was stuck a large eagle feather, the insignia of a chief. At his feet, where he had crumpled down under the enemy's bullets, lay the Indian lad in a huddled heap. It did not need the tiny eagle feather in the diminutive turban to convince Charley's observant eye that it was a case of father and son, a chief and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... because it was my first introduction to that artificially enforced merriment which is the inevitable concomitant of smart gatherings in America. The men invariably addressed each other as Old Man and the women as My Dear. No one was mentioned except by his or her first name or by some intimate diminutive or abbreviation. It seemed to be assumed that the guests were only interested in personal gossip relating to the marital infelicities of the neighboring countryside, who lost most at cards, and the theater. Every ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... were vibrant with hoarse reverence. He saw the sunlight of a cliff-surrounded diminutive Garden of Eden. He saw a vale of flowering grass, of palms and live oaks, saw patches of lilies so huge as to transcend belief, and dizzying clumps of tree cactus almost as tall ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... Berlin on-one of those excursions which the German General Staff arranges for the military observers and correspondents of neutral countries. You go out, a sort of zoo—our party included four or five Americans, a Greek, an Italian, a diminutive Spaniard, and a tall, preoccupied Swede—under the direction of some hapless officer of the General Staff. For a week, perhaps, you go hurtling through a closely articulated programme almost as personally helpless as a package in a pneumatic tube—night expresses, racing ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... and traditions of hospitality began to alleviate the situation and temper justice with mercy. The lady of the house was sent for, and proved to be a wonderfully pretty old lady, who might have just got out of a sedan-chair, whose manner was even finer and statelier than that of her brothers (diminutive as she was in point of mere inches), and who executed a tremendous courtesy when Sir Robert was presented. "An English gentleman travelling in this country for pleasure, and desirous of seeing 'Heart's Content,' Anne Buller," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... a diminutive wisp of humanity, a starved, slender elf with a freckled face, wizened and peaked, which at times looked a thousand years old. It reminded you of the face of one of those preternaturally aged monkeys that sit motionless in a dark corner of ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... strolled the streets I saw many a familiar face. Mosher I saw. He had grown very fat, and was talking to a diminutive woman with heavy blond hair (she must have weighed about ninety-five pounds, I think). They ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Mitchell are inseparable. For forty-four years he has taught in the University: first the Hebrew Tongue; next the History of the Church of Christ. As a Professor, Dr Mitchell comes into contact with a comparatively small number of students. The classes in St Mary's are diminutive—in some ways a source of much gratification to the writer and others—consequently he is little known by most men here. Of course, all are familiar with the Figure pacing the town in the bright of the forenoon; or, arm-in-arm with a youthful ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... rock-rabbit, but the savour of what the rock-rabbit had stored under the stone that had attracted Thor. And this booty still remained—a half-pint of ground-nuts piled carefully in a little hollow lined with moss. They were not really nuts. They were more like diminutive potatoes, about the size of cherries, and very much like potatoes in appearance. They were starchy and sweet, and fattening. Thor enjoyed them immensely, rumbling in that curious satisfied way deep down in his chest as he feasted. And then he ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... Mr. and Mrs. Applegate and their very diminutive daughter—whom somebody had fondly nicknamed "Puss"—and turned to follow the crowd. A short time later they set foot for the first time on the soil of the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... circumstances of its transformation, and the inscription in seal characters, engraved upon it by the bald-headed bonze, and below will now be also appended a faithful representation of it; but its real size is so very diminutive, as to allow of its being held by a child in his mouth while yet unborn, that were it to have been drawn in its exact proportions, the characters would, it is feared, have been so insignificant in size, that the beholder would have had to waste much of his eyesight, and it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... in so thriving a state, and were all low, but the plantain-trees made a better appearance, though they were not large. In general, the trees round this village, and which were seen at many of those which we passed before we anchored, are the cordia sebestina, but of a more diminutive size than the product of the southern isles. The greatest part of the village stands near the beach, and consists of above sixty houses there; but, perhaps, about forty more stand scattered about, farther up the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... provides vessels far dearer to the heart of the adventurous than anything driven by steam. Here, mayhap, will an untravelled traveller make his first acquaintance with the birch-bark canoe, and learn to call it by the affectionate diminutive, "Birch." Earlier in life there was no love lost between him and whatever bore that name. Even now, if the untravelled one's first acquaintance be not distinguished by an unlovely ducking, so much the worse. The ducking must come. Caution must be learnt by catastrophe. No one can ever know ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... from the carrying-poles called pikolans, and every make and model of motor-cars from ostentatious, self-important Rolls-Royces to busybody Fords. Standing in the middle of the roadway, controlling and directing this roaring river of traffic with surprising efficiency are diminutive Javanese policemen wearing blue helmets many sizes too large for them and armed with revolvers, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... particular articles, as the Street of Tailors, and Curiosity Street, they differ only in the appearance of the article exposed for sale. They are quite narrow and used only by pedestrians. The only quadruped I recollect seeing in them was a diminutive jackass, standing before a shop in "Old China Street." How he came there, or for what purpose, I could not determine. It may have been out of compliment to the "Foreign Devils," that his long ears were exhibited; but if ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... has been cultivated in England more for the value of the timber than for its fruit. There are several varieties, differing chiefly in the size of the nut, from the diminutive ben-nut, to the large or double French sort. The only improvement which can be expected in this, is a hardier sort which would be less ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... Chubby promises to go with me to that iridescent music-hall up the street. Chubby's appearance is deceptive. She is diminutive, with a Kenwigs tail of plaited hair down her straight little back. But she is almost twenty; she is amazingly swift behind the bar, and no man has yet bilked her of a penny. There is a Spartan courage about ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... without any warning even to herself, dropped upon her knees beside the diminutive bed and began to weep. It seemed somehow so touching that a thing like a mere dress could make a girl glad like that. All the troubles of the days that were past went over her in a great wave of agony, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... Silent, the future deliverer of Holland. The other and larger one was the Comtat Venaissin, a fief directly dependent upon the Pope. Of irregular shape, and touching the Rhone both above and below Orange, the Comtat Venaissin nearly enclosed the diminutive principality in its folds. Its capital, Avignon, having forfeited the distinction enjoyed in the fourteenth century as the residence of the Roman Pontiffs, still boasted the presence of a Legate of the Papal See, a poor compensation for the loss of its past splendor. On the shores ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... of rope; Billy and the others threw themselves after him; while half a dozen men working around the small eddy in the lee of the diminutive island caught up the oars and made ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Jersey State Horticultural Society, I find the following interesting paper from the pen of Mr. C. W. Idell, a commission merchant, whose intelligent interest in fruits extends beyond their current price. He gives so graphic a picture of the diminutive beginning of small fruit growing and marketing, that I am led ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... cubic centimetres. Huschke estimates the cranial contents of a Negress at 1127 cubic centimetres; of an old Negro at 1146 cubic centimetres. The capacity of the Malay skulls, estimated by water, equalled 36, 33 ounces, whilst in the diminutive Hindoos it falls to as little as ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley
... edge of a low escarpment. Below him the narrowing valley showed bare, black ribs of rock, long, winding gray lines leading down to a central floor where mesquite and cactus dotted the barren landscape. Moving objects, diminutive in size, gray and white in color, arrested Gale's roving sight. They bobbed away for a while, then stopped. They were antelope, and they had seen his horse. When he rode on they started once more, keeping to the lowest level. These wary animals ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... boy-bishop, a legitimate descendant of this family of foolery. On St. Nicholas's day, a saint who was the patron of children, the boy-bishop with his mitra parva and a long crosier, attended by his school-mates as his diminutive prebendaries, assumed the title and state of a bishop. The child-bishop preached a sermon, and afterwards, accompanied by his attendants, went about singing and collecting his pence: to such theatrical processions ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... cloak, gives the loose end a little shake, and casts it skilfully over his shoulder, so that it falls across his back, and, hanging there, displays the bright lining. He pauses to watch the result of an infantile accident. The baby picks itself up and brushes the dust from its diminutive frock with all the earnestness of early youth. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... music. Wistfully he feared he must be going downhill, wasn't altogether the man he used to be, since he found the business of pleasure so exhaustingly strenuous. And that was beastly unfair to his lovely wife—wouldn't do, would not do at all, by Gad! Therefore did he vanish into a diminutive and rather stuffy smoking-room, under the stairs, unfasten his nankeen waistcoat, unfasten his collar-stud, doze and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of Mr -; oh, yes, Mr Harding; he had not exactly caught the name— 'Precentor in the cathedral' surmised Mr Slope. Mr Harding confessed that such was the humble sphere of his work. 'Some parish duties as well,' suggested Mr Slope. Mr Harding acknowledged the diminutive incumbency of St Cuthbert's. Mr Slope then left him alone, having condescended sufficiently, and joined the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... varieties of chimneys which are to be found on the old Venetian palaces (whose style is to be traced partly to the Turk, and partly to the Moor). The curved lines of n harmonize admirably with those of the roof itself, and its diminutive size leaves the simplicity of form of the large building to which it belongs entirely uninterrupted and uninjured. Fig. o is seen perpetually carrying the whiteness of the Venetian marble up into the sky; but it is too tall, and attracts by far too much attention, being conspicuous on the sides ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... the most remarkable specimen of the industry of an animal. It was a hut or bower close to a small meadow enameled with flowers. The whole was on a diminutive scale, and I immediately recognized the famous nests described by the hunters of Bruiju. After well observing the whole I gave strict orders to my hunters not to destroy the little building. That, however, was an unnecessary caution, since the Papuans take great care never to disturb these ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Loraine was just going back to his tent, when he heard a shout. It was answered by the sentry on the south side of the camp; and a conversation in a language he could not understand took place. On going up to them, he could dimly distinguish an Indian of somewhat diminutive size ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... music—melancholy enough to make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Those cocoons which correspond with the smallest allowance of food contain only a dead and shrivelled larva; others, in whose case the provisions were less markedly decreased, contain females in the adult form, but of very diminutive size, comparable with that of the males, or even smaller. As for the controls which I was careful to leave, they confirm the fact that I had males in the part near the orifice of the reed and females in the part near the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... racemes of loveliness. But we miss, many of us, the flowering of the oaks in early spring, and we do not realize that this family of trees, most notable for rugged strength, has its bloom of beginning at the other end of the scale, in flowers of delicate coloring and rather diminutive size. ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... "product of the womb" (compare Gothic kilthei, "womb"). The Lowland-Scotch dialect still preserves an old word for "child" in bairn, cognate with Anglo-Saxon bearn, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic barn (the Gothic had a diminutive barnilo, "baby"), Sanskrit bharna, which signifies "the borne one," "that which is born," from the primitive Indo-European root bhr, "to bear, to carry in the womb," whence our "to bear" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... drew from his pocket a diminutive vial, the smallest I had ever seen, in which were a number of little white granules, about the size of the head of a pin. A printed label was wound around the vial, and it bore the word "Arsenicum." It passed from hand to ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... were situated, he again took his palfrey from the stall, and was soon mounted and on his way to the appointed place of rendezvous, much marvelling, as he ambled forward with speed far greater than was promised by the diminutive size of the animal he was mounted on, what could have happened to produce so great a change in Alice's conduct towards him, that in place of enjoining his absence as usual, or recommending his departure from the island, she should now ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Parisian accent has a little more bone than Miss Pupford, but is of the same trim orderly diminutive cast, and, from long contemplation, admiration, and imitation of Miss Pupford, has grown like her. Being entirely devoted to Miss Pupford, and having a pretty talent for pencil-drawing, she once made a portrait of that lady: which was so instantly identified and hailed ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... rulers were vain and had a great liking for having their portraits painted. This vanity extended to the Courtiers and even to the dwarfs, several of whom were usually connected with the court as a source of amusement. There are portraits of some of these diminutive creatures so skillfully painted that we cannot help wishing that more worthy subjects had been used. Thus the vanity of monarchs and their courtiers gave a direction to Spanish art which can be accounted for in no other way—their greatest artists are always ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... necklaces of human teeth, and armlets of shells. Their habitations were low, small, and dirty huts of a circular form, roofed with the leaf of the cocoanut tree, and destitute of every description of furniture. They were altogether the most ugly and diminutive race we had hitherto ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... well have tried to seize and hold a couple of diminutive volcanoes, as to lay hands on the men whose supply of fire ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... husky reply, and blushed far into his brick-colored hair. He was of an age when a babyish diminutive becomes a thorn unspeakable. Mrs. Weatherwax glanced tranquilly past his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... he had grown six inches out at sea, and though still short, was not diminutive; he was a small Apollo, a model of symmetry, and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, and a tanned cheek that became ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... beaver overcoat and a huge beaver cap that concealed all of his face but his eyes, the tip of his nose, and the frozen end of a beard which stuck out between the laps of his turned-up collar like a horn. For all the world he looked like a diminutive drum-major, and Philip rose speechless, his pipe still in his mouth, as his strange visitor closed the ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... years after, and found him diminutive in stature, very shy, and unwilling to look any one in the face. His eyes were deep set and restless; his teeth long and protruding; his nails black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely barren; he seemed unable to comprehend ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... and stayed at home; and Grace spent the afternoon in investigations about the harrying of the thrushes, but, alas! without coming a bit nearer the truth. Nothing was seen or heard of Lady Temple till, at half-past nine, one of the midges, or diminutive flies used at Avonmonth, came to the door, and Fanny came into ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... restoration of the lost female. The stout yeoman arose, and, moving to the entranced Narra-mattah, he took the infant into his large hands, and for a moment the honest borderer gazed at the boy with a wistful and softened eye. Then raising the diminutive face of the infant to his own expanded and bold features, he touched its cheek with his lips, and returned the babe to its mother, who witnessed the whole proceeding in some such tribulation as the startled wren exhibits when the foot of the urchin is seen to draw ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... is the Polish form of Bartholomew; Maciej and Maciek (a diminutive) are variant forms ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... who lives in one of the great mountains of the Blue Ridge and owns all the game. Others are the Little Men, probably the two Thunder boys; the Little People, the fairies who live in the rock cliffs; and even the Detsata, a diminutive sprite who holds the place of our Puck. One unwritten formula, which could not be obtained correctly by dictation, was addressed to the "Red-Headed Woman, whose hair hangs ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... of this dead period of graying days, Constance Elliot burst one morning—a God from the Machine—tearing down the lane in her diminutive car with the great figure of Gunther, like some Norse divinity, beside her. She fell out of her auto, and into an explanation, in one breath, embracing Mary warmly ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... death of Linus, the burthen of the ancient lament of Greece, was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithynian Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and Enoch, whose early death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... books, papers, and several diminutive phials. One of these phials she held up to the light, contemplating its ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... moment, and then bent down to open the little gate. His stalwart figure, in the diminutive enclosure, reduced it to the appearance of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... have in time grown to mortal height. Whether fairies be the decayed poor relations of more successful deities, gods whose cult has been forgotten and neglected (as the Irish Sidhe, or fairy-folk), or diminutive animistic spirits, originating in the belief that every object, small or great, possessed a personality, it is noticeable that Celtic fairies are of human height, while those of the Teutonic peoples are usually dwarfish. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... "What, gentlemen, think you of this striking product of nature?" there ensued the discovery that of the said product of nature there remained little beyond the tail, while Sobakevitch, with an air as though at least HE had not eaten it, was engaged in plunging his fork into a much more diminutive piece of fish which happened to be resting on an adjacent platter. After his divorce from the sturgeon, Sobakevitch ate and drank no more, but sat frowning ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of 80 degrees east of south, towards the nearest bend of a line of yarra river-trees. There we found, after riding two miles, another diminutive Lachlan, precisely similar to the former, but rather less: it was very sinuous in its course and full of holes, but surrounded by green bushes with chirping birds; but it was too obvious that these holes had been long, long dry. Thence I pursued a course ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... all right, Mr. Cleggett," said Elmer, forgivingly. "Nobody's feelin's is hoited. And any friend of th' little dame here is a friend o' mine." The diminutive, on Elmer's lips, was intended as a compliment; Lady Agatha was not a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... choir side of the ambulatory, particularly at the back of the reredos and the north-east portion adjacent to it, is very interesting work. The lower part is panelled with tracery in low relief, with the arches springing from diminutive heads. All the shafting is ornamented with a small ball-like enrichment. Above the panelling is some open tracery of beautiful design. By reference to the plan it will be seen that much of this original screen-work ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... it, the huge grim thing; many of the others were large, strikingly so, and appeared fully to justify the old man's conclusion that their owners must have been strange fellows; but, compared with this mighty mass of bone, they looked small and diminutive like those of pigmies; it must have belonged to a giant, one of those red- haired warriors of whose strength and stature such wondrous tales are told in the ancient chronicles of the north, and whose grave-hills, when ransacked, occasionally ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... from the pack, and running out to some distance, would leap upon a rock that was there; then, after dropping his wings, flirting with his spread tail, erecting the ruff upon his neck, and throwing back his head, he would swell and strut upon the rock, exhibiting himself like a diminutive turkey-cock. After manoeuvring in this way for a few moments, he would commence flapping his wings in short quick strokes, which grew more rapid as he proceeded, until a 'booming' sound was produced, more like the rumble of distant ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... there was a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a ladle, and two or three pieces of tableware, bent, crooked, and broken, hardly worth the mentioning. Of horses there were two lean and decrepit-looking animals, and the cattle consisted of a diminutive black cow and her calf, neither of much value, yet forming no doubt the most valuable part of the whole bequest. This was your father's portion, for as to his taking the other part, giving up the prospect of our mother's goodly store of money and other property, and living a secluded ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... often specifically applied to two limited manifestations of the volition. It was the commonest of synonyms alike for 'self will' or 'stubbornness'—in which sense it still survives in 'wilful'—and for 'lust,' or 'sensual passion.' It also did occasional duty for its own diminutive 'wish,' for 'caprice,' for 'good-will,' and for 'free consent' (as nowadays ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... peculiar to these parts; they are inversely conical, adhering to the membrane by their smaller end. The best mode of exhibiting them, is to tie the vena portae of a living animal, when they erect themselves by the afflux of blood. These diminutive organs, about 3/100 of an inch long, then exhibit distinctly, under the microscope, four red longitudinal lines, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... very diminutive man, carelessly—very carelessly—dressed; a face lined, care-worn, and so expressionless that it reminded one of 'that dull, changeless brow, where cold Obstruction's apathy appalls the gazing mourner's heart,'—a face like death in life. The instant he ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... measured, were in general from four feet seven inches to four feet eight inches high (old measure of France).* (* About five feet three inches English measure.) We were assured that the whole tribe were of this diminutive size; but we must not forget that what is called a tribe constitutes, properly speaking, but one family, owing to the exclusion of all foreign connections. The Indians of the lowest stature next to the Guaicas are the Guainares ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... be more charmingly girlish, or more prettily worded! The diminutive little note seems to have been preserved, an almost solitary survival of the memorials of the days to which it belongs. It must doubtless have been followed by sundry others, but was, I suppose, specially treasured as having been ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... me, is the colonel angry?' asked Teddy, as looking into the large, brightly lighted hall, he suddenly felt his diminutive size. ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... to the contrary, seem to be much the same as they were in the time of the Saracens. European critics, however, condemn its most elaborate beauties as "heavy and barbarous." Its celebrated portals are pronounced "diminutive, and in very bad taste." Its throng of pillars gives it the air of "a park rather than a temple," and the whole is made still more incongruous by the unequal length of their shafts, being grotesquely compensated by a proportionate variation of size in their bases ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... shrewdly observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or POCKET edition.] I mentioned my doubts to Dr Johnson, who said, he would go two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo. I therefore sent Joseph forward, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... there was a loft between the cell occupied by May and the roof of the prison, a loft of such diminutive proportions that a man of average height could not stand upright in it. This loft had neither window nor skylight, and the gloom would have been intense, had not a few faint sun-rays struggled through the interstices of some ill-adjusted ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... the march was resumed, our little army passing through the delightful hill scenery of Loudon county, and through the diminutive villages of Hamilton and Purcellville. As the afternoon advanced, we found ourselves toiling up the ascent of the Blue Ridge, pleasant farm houses and fine orchards greeting our sight on either side of the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... a shameless appetite again; a ravenous lust of food, which grew steadily worse and worse. It gnawed unmercifully in my breast; carrying on a silent, mysterious work in there. It was as if a score of diminutive gnome-like insects set their heads on one side and gnawed for a little, then laid their heads on the other side and gnawed a little more, then lay quite still for a moment's space, and then began afresh, boring noiselessly in, and without any haste, and left empty ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... which now had come. Was his work finished? His course run? And, if he must live and solve his problem, could he stand after she had left? He bent closer to her, and listened to the gentle breathing. He seemed again to see her, as he was wont in the years past, flitting about her diminutive rose garden and calling to him to come and share her boundless joy. "Come!" he heard her call. "Come, Padre dear, and see my beautiful thoughts!" And then, so often, "Oh, Padre!" bounding into his arms, "here ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... TEMPO andante (going or walking) andantino (diminutive of andante and therefore meaning literally "going less," but because of a misconception of meaning now often understood as ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... merry rompings with his little brothers and cousins. If he lives near the river he spends a few hours a day in the water, bathing, splashing his playmates, and catching frogs and other edibles. A favorite pastime of his is to make a diminutive bow and ply his arrows at some old stump or some unlucky lizard or other living thing that he may have espied. If monkeys, crows, or other bold marauders are overnumerous, he probably has to sit out in the rude watch-house in the little clearing and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... to the serpent. It stupefies and bewilders the simple heart, which sees it without understanding it, which touches it without being able to believe in it, and which sinks engulfed in the problem of it, like Empedocles in Etna. Non possum capere te, cape me, says the Aristotelian motto. Every diminutive of Beelzebub is an abyss, each demoniacal act is a gulf of darkness. Natural cruelty, inborn perfidy and falseness, even in animals, cast lurid gleams, as it were, into that fathomless pit of Satanic perversity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a minute we remained motionless on our knees while the king stood gazing at us, it seemed to me with an air of doubt. Then slowly, and with a gait that smacked of majesty despite his ungainly appearance and diminutive stature, he stalked across to the doorway and ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... see." McLean looked up and winked at the engineer in the diminutive cab. "It's car-reful you'll be, Misther engineer," he cautioned, "an' watch your steerin' on ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the hoofed beasts. The way lies between two rows of animals. Of these the visitor should notice particularly the wild oxen of India and Java; compare the Indian rhinoceros with that of South Africa; and notice the hippopotamus family, from South Africa, as well as a diminutive specimen of the Indian elephant, and a half-grown elephant, from Africa. Having noticed these ponderous creatures, the attention of the visitor will be next attracted to the Llamas, which are arranged ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... he pointed to a diminutive figure standing at the end of the long table, and engaged in folding some ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... frequently referred to by Sir Walter Scott, who accepted it himself.[3] "In fact," he says, "there seems reason to conclude that these duergar [in English, dwarfs] were originally nothing else than the diminutive natives of the Lappish, Lettish and Finnish nations, who, flying before the conquering weapons of the Asae, sought the most retired regions of the north, and there endeavoured to hide themselves from their eastern invaders." Scott, again, ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... MSS. of Mr. Syme, writer to the signet. Those, who are desirous of more information, may consult Craig de Feudis, Lib. II. dig. 9. sec. 24. It is hoped the reader will excuse this digression, though somewhat professional; especially as there can be little doubt, that this diminutive republic must soon share the fate of mightier states; for, in consequence of the increase of commerce, lands possessed under this singular tenure, being now often brought to sale, and purchased by the neighbouring proprietors, will, in process of time, be included ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... are more injurious than the larger variety, because their diminutive size escapes the gardener's eye. A good way to keep them under is to make small holes, about an inch deep, and about the diameter of the little finger, round the plants which they infest. Into these holes the slugs will retreat during the day, and they may be killed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... shrank together like elastic, and broke ranks again to swerve over the stretching waste. From this visioned pantomime presently came a sound, a tiny shot. The figures were too far for discerning which fired it. It evidently did no harm, and was repeated at once. A babel of diminutive explosions followed, while the horsemen galloped on in unexpected circles. Soon, for no visible reason, the dots ran together, bunching compactly. The shooting stopped, the dust rose thick again from the crowded hoofs, cloaking the group, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... who are not among the public speakers, are Mrs. Spofford, the treasurer, wife of the proprietor of the Riggs House, and Miss Ellen H. Sheldon, secretary of the Association. To these ladies is due much of the success of the convention. Mrs. Sheldon is of diminutive stature, with gray hair, and Mrs. Spofford is of large and queenly figure, with white hair. Her magnificent presence is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... itself. Though its vocabulary is limited in matters of science, philosophy, religion, and the like, Lowland Scots is very rich in homely terms and in humorous and tender expressions. For love, or for celebrating the effects of whisky, English is immeasurably inferior. The free use of the diminutive termination in ie or y—a termination capable of expressing endearment, familiarity, ridicule, and contempt as well as mere smallness—not only has considerable effect in emotional shading, but contributes to the liquidness of the verse ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... sealskin and silk, a "Gainsborough" crowning her false "bang." I always think of Max O'Rell's clever saying, when I see her: "The sweat of the American husband crystallizes into diamond ear-rings for the American woman." My janitress sports a diminutive pair of those jewels and has hopes of larger ones! Instead of "doing" the bachelor's rooms in the building as her husband's helpmeet, she "does" her spouse, and a char- woman works for her. She is one of the drops in the tide that ebbs and flows on Twenty-third ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... resolved to perform the voyage in a vessel so small, and so unlike what had ever appeared in Portugal, that it should not fail to excite astonishment, how any man could undertake so long and perilous a navigation, in such a frail and diminutive bottom. ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... their behalf and to honor their patron saints. Their usual compositions were the Madonna enthroned with the infant Jesus in her arms, surrounded by holy personages or angels, with the portraits of those who ordered the paintings, in general of diminutive size to express humility, and kneeling in adoration with clasped hands and upraised eyes. Unless the characteristics of the master-hand are unmistakable in this class of works, they are to be ranked as of the schools of the great men ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... aged beggars. Often at posting-houses and other halting places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the only realities of the day; and many a time, when the money she had brought to give them was all given away, she would sit with her folded hands, thoughtfully looking after some diminutive girl leading her grey father, as if the sight reminded her of something in the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... General Maury, for whom I brought a letter of introduction from General Johnston. He is a very gentlemanlike and intelligent but diminutive Virginian, and had only just ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... drawing-room, here Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did to-night with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Byrne had ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... ditch made by the spring as it won its way out of the heart of the knoll; or rather it was a green hallway, overtopped with a frieze of mesquite, leading in privately to the source of the stream. Janet, as she entered the house-like cosiness of this diminutive valley, felt very much as if she had just stepped in out of the universe. On a prairie there is such an insistent stare of space, so great a lack of stopping-place for the mind, that this little piece of outdoors, with the sun shining in at its eastern end, was a veritable snug-harbor in an ocean ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... being hung a little above the ground there seemed to be neither doors nor windows. She had no doubt (though really I cannot think why) that the moment had come in which to use the nut which had been given her. She opened it, and out came a diminutive hall porter at whose belt hung a tiny chain, at the end of which was a golden key half as long as the smallest ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... layers being more than three inches thick. He adds, "It discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only be referred to a higher stage of civilization and refinement than is discoverable in the work of Mexicans or Pueblos of the present day. Indeed, so beautifully diminutive and true are the details of the structure as to cause it at a little distance to have all the appearance of a magnificent ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... bed, to sleep upon! How came they to be furnished with such a luxury? Why, this season the Doctor had hired more than the usual number of pickers. The outbuilding given them to sleep in was thus too small to accommodate all, so two were taken into the house, and a diminutive closet, generally used by the family as a bath-room, was turned into a bed-room for the lucky couple. Now for a description of the bed. Over the bath was placed an ironing-board, and upon this a mattress quite as narrow, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... however, the conditions are very dissimilar. In the first place the machine owing to its diminutive size as compared with the airship, offers a small and inconspicuous target. Then there is its high independent speed, which is far beyond that of the airship. Furthermore its mobility is greater. It can wheel, turn sharply to the right or to the left, and pursue ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... business scuttling your own ship. Now as I am in a way a practical person, which is, I take it, a diminutive state of hard-headedness, any detraction against hard-headedness must appear as leveled against myself. Gimlet in hand, deep down amidships, it would look as if I were squatted and set on ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... descriptive powers were remarkable, and he could blend pathos with argument in a manner unusual. He was a warm friend of Mr. Lincoln, and one of the most characteristic stories ever told of Mr. Lincoln is in connection with Governor Stephens' diminutive appearance and great care for his shattered health. On one occasion before the war he took off three overcoats, one after the other, in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, who rose, and walking around him, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... loose end a little shake, and casts it skilfully over his shoulder, so that it falls across his back, and, hanging there, displays the bright lining. He pauses to watch the result of an infantile accident. The baby picks itself up and brushes the dust from its diminutive frock with all the earnestness of early youth. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... 73-79. He, too, comes from the Low German tradition. (9) "Bloedel" is Bleda, the brother of Attila, with whom he reigned conjointly from A.D. 433 to 445. In our poem the name appears frequently with the diminutive ending, as "Bloedelin". (10) "Werbel and Swemmel", who doubtless owe their introduction to some minstrel, enjoy special favor and are intrusted with the important mission of inviting the Burgundians to Etzel's court, an honor ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... even there, that down to about 1815 such a thing was not known, the drinking-vessels at dinner being capacious pewter mugs, each table being furnished with two. We were at one time a good deal incommoded by the diminutive size of the milk-pitchers, which were all the while empty and gone for more. A waiter mentioned, for our patience, that, when these were used up, a larger size would be provided. 'O, if that's the case, the remedy is easy.' Accordingly the hint was passed through the room, the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... never fall in love with the persons they are expected to, but invariably go off on an unknown tangent of their own, in obedience to the same law of Nature, perhaps, which causes an unusually tall girl to lose her heart to a very diminutive—though generally ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... great beaver overcoat and a huge beaver cap that concealed all of his face but his eyes, the tip of his nose, and the frozen end of a beard which stuck out between the laps of his turned-up collar like a horn. For all the world he looked like a diminutive drum-major, and Philip rose speechless, his pipe still in his mouth, as his strange visitor closed the ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... tympanidis rogum inlatus est. This passage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning both the reading and the sense as any passage in the whole treatise. Tympanum is used for a timbrel or drum, tympanidia a diminutive of it. Lambinus says tympana "were sticks with which the tyrant used to beat the condemned." P. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... each step, and tapping her shining boots with the riding crop. Her own horse she found at the hitching rack, and beside it Donnegan was on his chestnut horse. It was a tall horse, and he looked more diminutive than ever before, pitched so high ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... productions which were sprinkled in the commentaries of his "best editions." In the pride of boyish learning, Vivian had limited his library to Classics, and the proud leaders of the later schools did not consequently grace his diminutive bookcase. In this dilemma he flew to his father, and confessed by his request that his favourites were ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... living for some time after I was christened, I got the Dutch appellation of my maternal grandfather, for my share of the family nomenclature, which happened to be Cornelius—Corny was consequently the diminutive by which I was known to all the whites of my acquaintance, for the first sixteen or eighteen years of my life, and to my parents as long as they lived. Corny Littlepage is not a bad name, in itself, and I trust they who do me the favour to read this manuscript, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... his associates, which he hears every hour, yet his memory is good in other respects. One says he is THOMAS PAINE, author of the 'Age of Reason,' a work he has never read; another calls himself General WASHINGTON; and one old lady of diminutive size calls herself General SCOTT, and is never so good-natured as when thus addressed. One is always in court attending a trial, and wondering and asking when the court is to rise. Another has to eat up the building, drink dry the canal, and swallow the Little Falls village, and ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... with hoarse reverence. He saw the sunlight of a cliff-surrounded diminutive Garden of Eden. He saw a vale of flowering grass, of palms and live oaks, saw patches of lilies so huge as to transcend belief, and dizzying clumps of tree cactus almost as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... Those diminutive arts and petty trickeries of feigned resistance, with which our "angels without wings" strive to delay the surrender of the maiden-citadels of their hearts, are but vexatious obstacles to his legitimate triumph. These, the veteran wooer attempts to carry by storm ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the mountains and hillsides was in Mr. Fortune's time distinguished as "Hill tea," while both large and diminutive plantations on the lowlands or the plains were all called "tea gardens," a term which is now applied by the English to the extensive plantations of ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... In contrast to this diminutive race we have discovered traces of a gigantic race, still in existence. Three of these remarkable beings inhabit this locality, where they occupy high positions as proprietors of the leading hostelries of the place. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... distinction is not clear. As all poems were intended to be sung, the poet was also a composer; the biography of Jaufre Rudel, for instance, says that this troubadour "made many poems with good tunes but poor [24] words." The tune known as son (diminutive sonnet) was as much the property of a troubadour as his poem, for it implied and would only suit a special form of stanza; hence if another poet borrowed it, acknowledgment was generally made. Dante, in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, informs us concerning the structure ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... all European monarchs, since the murder of Gustavus, he was the most hostile. An army under Montesquieu occupied Savoy and Nice without resistance, and the people readily adopted the new system. A week later Custine seized the left bank of the Rhine, where diminutive secular and ecclesiastical territories, without cohesion, were an easy prey. The Declaration of Rights, said Gouverneur Morris, proved quite as effectual as the trumpets of Joshua. Mentz fell, October ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... one of the turnkey's rooms in the new gaol is to be seen an article of harness, which at first creates surprise to the mind of the beholder, who considers what animal of the brute creation exists of so diminutive a size as to admit of its use. On inquiry, it will be found to be a bridle, perfect in head-band, throat-lash, etc., for a human being. There is attached to this bridle a round piece of cross wood, of almost ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... meet a lone Washoe Indian; he is riding a diminutive, scraggy-looking mustang. One of his legs is muffled up in a red blanket, and in one hand he carries a rudely-invented crutch. "How will you trade horses?" I banteringly ask as we meet in the road; and I dismount for an interview, to find out what kind of Indians these ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... snarling like a tiger at an angel who has pulled a soul out of his claws, is equally well conceived; we know nothing like its ferocity except Rembrandt's sketches of wounded wild beasts. The angels we think generally disappointing; they are for the most part diminutive in size, and the crossing of the extremities of the two wings that cover the feet, gives them a coleopterous, cockchafer look, which is not a little undignified; the colors of their plumes are somewhat coarse and dark—one is covered with silky hair, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... vol. i. xxxi. 1. 1, where the dwarfs and pigmies who came to the court of the king, in the period of the Ptolemies, to serve in his household, are mentioned. Various races of diminutive stature, which have since been driven down to the upper basin of the Congo, formerly extended further northward, and dwelt between Darfur and the marshes of Bahr-el-Ghazal. As to the Danga, cf. what has been said on p. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... level prairie. Here Glenn paused to determine what course he should take. The sun shone brightly on the interminable expanse before him, and not a breeze ruffled the long dry grass around, nor disturbed the few sear leaves that yet clung to the diminutive clusters of bushes scattered at long intervals over the prairie. It was a delightful scene. From the high position of our hero, he could distinguish objects miles distant on the plain; and if the landscape was not enlivened by ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Patrick—if I thought it might pass as Patrick! Patrick has possibilities. The diminutive is Pat, and that's not ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but were covered with beads and brass ornaments, even the women having only a few fibres hanging like tails before and behind. Their hair was dressed in the most fantastic fashion. They also carried diminutive stools, on which ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... nine years old, diminutive and pale. Her long, silky brown hair, which was as straight as an Indian's, like mother's, and which she tore out when angry, usually covered her face, and her wild eyes looked wilder still peeping through it. She was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... permitted to enjoy our own interests, and, to a great extent, seek our own happiness; and if we barely obey the suggestions of natural sympathy, and manifest common generosity, it is enough. They would bring down this exalted standard to our own diminutive stature, so that we can measure ourselves by it without inconvenience. But all such efforts are high-handed rebellion, and will prove utterly vain. God has placed it on a pedestal high as the eternal throne, ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... of the ground are made, so that unhealthy positions may be avoided. The troops, being placed, immediately proceed to clear the sites of their respective encampments, and wagons are set to work to bring in logs with which huts may be constructed. In about a week thousands of diminutive log houses arise, roofed with the shelter tents of the soldiers, or, when the occupants have sufficient handicraft ability, with rough shingles. Shelters are erected, as far as possible, for the animals, generally ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assistant with the Parisian accent has a little more bone than Miss Pupford, but is of the same trim orderly diminutive cast, and, from long contemplation, admiration, and imitation of Miss Pupford, has grown like her. Being entirely devoted to Miss Pupford, and having a pretty talent for pencil-drawing, she once made a portrait of that lady: which was so ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... play at loggats with them?] A loggat is a small log, or piece of wood; a diminutive from log. Hence loggats, as the name of an old game among the common people, and one of those forbidden by a statute of the 33rd of Henry VIII. A stake was fixed into the ground, and those who played ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... a drop of cognac! Get him some father!" The reluctant farmer procured a big bottle and a very diminutive glass known as the "petit verre," which held about a thimbleful. Paul would congratulate the good dame on her keen perception. At this period Vodry would generally ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... lies about ten miles distant from Caen, in a north-easterly direction, in a valley washed by the diminutive stream, the Meu, a little to the north of the road which leads to Bayeux. Of its "short and simple annals," few have come to the knowledge of the writer of this article; and for those few, he is wholly indebted to the kindness of M. de Gerville, who, last year, discovered at Mortain ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... which was readily granted. He was a stout, hearty, good-natured fellow, possessed of a rich Irish accent, and in the best of humor commenced to prepare his supper. Just about this time there came into camp another lone man, leading a diminutive donkey, not much larger than a good-sized sheep. The donkey, on halting, gave us a salute that simply silenced the ordinary mule. The two men got acquainted immediately, and by the time their supper was over they had struck a bargain to put their effects together by way of hitching ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... again by mechanical means, and he writes learnedly on the infallible signs of witchcraft. By mixing horse-dung with human semen he believed he was able to produce a medium from which, by chemical treatment in a retort, a diminutive human being, or homunculus, as he called it, could be produced. The spirits of the elements, the sylphs of the air, the gnomes of the earth, the salamanders of the fire, and the undines of the water, were to him real and undoubted existences ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... diverting to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of himself. And why not? What could Caesar want more? Though his craft was none of the largest, it was subject to him; and though his crew might only ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and the children went to live at the Marshalsea. Little Charles was placed under the roof—it cannot be called under the care—of a "reduced old lady," dwelling in Camden Town, who must have been a clever and prophetic old lady if she anticipated that her diminutive lodger would one day give her a kind of indirect unenviable immortality by making her figure, under the name of "Mrs. Pipchin," in "Dombey and Son." Here the boy seems to have been left almost entirely to his own devices. He spent his Sundays in the prison, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... her work to rest with tenderness upon the form of a little child, so small and still that you would not have noticed her presence but in following the lady's loving glance. She sat in a tiny rocking chair, nursing a little white rabbit on her lap. She was not a beautiful child—she was too diminutive and pale, with hazy blue eyes and faded yellow hair; yet her little face was so demure and sweet, so meek and loving, that it would haunt and soften you more than that of a beautiful child could. The child had been orphaned from her birth, and when but a few days old had been received ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... fixed upon a tiny purple figure that had just emerged from a side door in the gymnasium and was walking slowly across the big floor. Immediately afterward a door opened on the opposite side and a diminutive scarlet-clad boy ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... sense of success will give the pupil, will probably, in his own opinion, be thought well worthy the price. Neither his reason nor his will was in fault; all he wanted, was strength to break the diminutive chains of habit; chains which, it seems, have power to enfeeble their captives exactly in proportion to the length ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Blunt. No, my little diminutive Mistress, my small Epitomy of Woman-kind, we can prattle when our Hands are in, but we are raw and bashful, young Beginners; for this is the first time we ever were in love: we are something aukard, or so, but we shall come on in time, and mend ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... withdrew, she kept the quilt entirely over her head, for her womanly spirit had not yet been stiffened to defiantly glare at man by those delicate touches—the pasting on of her front hair-piece; the tying on of her back switch to the diminutive stump of original tresses; the proper adjustment of her dental fixtures, her collar and tie and the various articles constituting the sub-structure necessary for their support. We cannot go into the details, because the plans and specifications are missing. Bridget ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... not the sole, or even the principal, is a subordinate, reason of our Lord's action. But it is also to be considered in the light of the woman's quick-witted retort, which drew out of it an inference which we cannot suppose that Christ did not intend. He uses a diminutive for 'dogs,' which shows that He is not thinking of the fierce, unclean animals, masterless and starving, that still haunt Eastern cities, and deserve their bad character, but of domestic pets, who live with the household, and are near the table. In fact, the woman ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a baker's shop for a twopenny loaf, and conceiving it to be diminutive in size, remarked to the baker that he did not believe it was weight. "Never mind that," said the man of dough, "you will have the less to carry."—"True," replied the lad, and throwing three half-pence on the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... certain fullness about the hips,) as if it was intended to be worn with a hoop. Her slender throat was encircled by a black riband, with a small locket attached to it; and upon the top of her head rested a diminutive lace cap. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ensued the discovery that of the said product of nature there remained little beyond the tail, while Sobakevitch, with an air as though at least HE had not eaten it, was engaged in plunging his fork into a much more diminutive piece of fish which happened to be resting on an adjacent platter. After his divorce from the sturgeon, Sobakevitch ate and drank no more, but sat frowning ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in the negative he walked into the room where I was, and speedily by his appearance, removed any apprehensions I had felt as to my safety. Nothing could less resemble the tall port and sturdy bearing of a gendarme, than the diminutive and dwarfish individual before me. His height could scarcely have reached five feet, of which the head formed fully a fourth part; and even this was rendered in appearance still greater by a mass of loosely floating black hair that fell upon his neck ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... spider story is sent from California by the Rev. Dr. McCook, of honey-ant fame. He found a small cocoon of eggs and young spiders, which had no less than five other kinds of insects living in and about it. These intruders consisted of small red ants, a diminutive beetle, and a series formed by a minute chalcid, parasitic on a larger chalcid, which was parasitic on an ichneumon, which was parasitic on the spider. All were seeking to devour the eggs and spiderlings, yet the whole cocoonful, victims included, seemed ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... been a herbivorous marsupial. The whole assemblage appear, from the joint observations of Professor Owen and Dr. Falconer, to indicate a low grade of quadruped, probably of the marsupial type. They were, for the most part, diminutive, the two largest not much exceeding our common hedgehog and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... opposite to it there is a very large breed of fowls, called ayam jago; of these I have seen a cock peck from off of a common dining table; when inclined to rest they sit on the first joint of the leg and are then taller than the ordinary fowls. It is singular if the same country produces likewise the diminutive breed that goes by the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... we had a very refreshing shower bath under a thundering cascade of water tumbling over the edge of a gorge. Near at hand, and conveniently so, too, for the priesthood, is a small shrine sacred to the Hindoo god Brahin, a diminutive edition of whom stands on a little pedestal, amidst braziers, lamps, figures with elephants' heads and human bodies, and other monstrosities. You may be certain there was a mendicant priest ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... his written style was powerful, his spoken style was contemptible. Painters have represented him as a kind of demi-god, with the stature of an athlete and the grace of an Apollo. But he seems to have been diminutive in stature; and there appears to be evidence to prove that there was that in his appearance which, at first sight, rather repelled than attracted an audience. He felt these defects keenly, and could not but wish sometimes that they were removed. But ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... is shaped like the letter T with an L to it. The upright beam connects it with Every Lane, and maintains a non-committal character, since its sides are blank walls; upon one side of the cross-beam are four houses, while a fifth occupies the diminutive L of the court, esconcing itself in a snug corner, as if ready to rush out at the cry of "All in! all in!" Gardens fill the unoccupied sides, toy-gardens, but large enough to raise all the flowers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... here, however, we must pause to note that energy and will could do much toward making even a pinnacle rock a naval base; for we see the gigantic fortress of Heligoland erected on what was little but a shoal; and we see the diminutive water areas of Malta and Gibraltar made to hold in safety the war-ships of the greatest ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Husayn, little used except in Syria where it is a favourite name for Christians. The Muhit of Butrus Al-Bostni (s.v.) tells us that it also means a bird called Ab Hasan and supplies various Egyptian synonyms. In Mod. Arab. Grammar the form Fa''l is a diminutive as Hammd for Ahmad, 'Ammr for 'Amr. So the fem. form, Fa''lah, e.g. Khaddgah little Khadijah and Naffsahlittle Nafisah; Ar'rah little clitoris - whereas in Heb. it is an incrementative e.g. dabblah a large dablah (cake or lump of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... whose wives and daughters figure in the society columns as leaders in those useful callings of bridge whist and select receptions, the great and ignorant mob of pygmies who never had the capacity for a political idea bigger than their own diminutive measurement, the newspaper and magazine hacks who live on abuse of everybody who has a high ideal, all joined in the whoop and chase after Douglas of the fourth district, branded him as a fakir, an idiot, a senseless dreamer, an egotist, a demagogue, a party traitor, a knocker, ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... this evening. She and Teddy walked to their little hotel; to-morrow she would see her editor, and they would search for cheaper quarters. She would get the half-promised position or another; it mattered not which. She would board economically, or find diminutive quarters for housekeeping; be comfortable either way. If they kept house, some kindly old woman would be found to give Teddy bread and butter when he came in from school. And on hot summer Sundays she and Teddy ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... time gone two or three hundred yards from the village, and, behind them, at a brisk trot, seated on a diminutive ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... about, and exhibited signs of the most ecstatic delight. It was observed that in proportion to the gradations of the tones to the soft point, the feelings of the animal appeared to be increased. After performing actions, which an animal so diminutive would, at first sight, seem incapable of, the little creature, to the astonishment of the delighted spectators, suddenly ceased to move, fell down, and expired without evincing ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... antiquity in which the poet-painters of the Neo-Greek school delight to dwell, and come back to modern times. Passing through one of the central rooms, one is struck by the appearance of a great space of gilded wall hung with pictures considerable in number, but mostly quite diminutive in size. It needs no reference to the catalogue nor to the signature of these works to tell us the name of their author. If the singular talent which they display were not enough, the mise en scene would leave no doubt that this extraordinary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a rear leg as she leaped back, wild to rollick, tucking her under one arm, administering three diminutive punishments on ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the streets I saw many a familiar face. Mosher I saw. He had grown very fat, and was talking to a diminutive woman with heavy blond hair (she must have weighed about ninety-five pounds, I think). They ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... stupendous concourse was reached. Thousands of these taxis and similar vehicles were parked along its broad flanks, while literal swarms of diminutive individuals ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... much impression on the New York. Apart from the serious nature of the accident, it made an irresistibly comic picture to see the huge vessel drifting down the dock with a snorting tug at its heels, for all the world like a small boy dragging a diminutive puppy down the road with its teeth locked on a piece of rope, its feet splayed out, its head and body shaking from side to side in the effort to get every ounce of its weight used to the best advantage. At first all appearance showed that the sterns of the two vessels would collide; but from ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... Emmet is a very old variation of Emma, and sometimes spelt Emmot; Sens is a corruption of Sancha, naturalised among us in the thirteenth century; and Collet or Colette, the diminutive of Nichola, a common and favourite ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... begins with an egg no bigger than a mustard seed, out of which comes a diminutive caterpillar, which is kept in a frame and fed upon mulberry leaves. When the caterpillars are full grown, they climb upon twigs placed for them and begin to spin or make the cocoon. The silk comes from two little orifices in the head in the ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... mill pond of his consciousness. He would have said that he "had his traps set for an idea and was watching them." Generally he was watching his traps with a look of dreamy contemplation. He, too, wore no coat or waistcoat. His calico shirt was decorated with diminutive roses in pink ink. His ready tied necktie was very red and fastened on his collar button with an elastic loop. A nugget of free gold which, he loved to explain, had come from the Rocky Mountains and ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... fine, thanks. Say, did you get your letter?" said the diminutive postman, Who always talked very fast and tried to crowd as many sentences as he could ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... teacups and a plate of cake stood on the table, the remnants of the early tea she and Lucy had taken a little while before. Presently a light step sounded in the lobby, and Lucy came in dressed for walking. Five years make a great change; for she had grown from a slight, diminutive girl, to a tall, lithe, graceful young lady, just on the verge ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... on the schooner Rose of Milton, Capt. Hamilton, cruising on Lakes Ontario and Erie. In one trip to the town of Erie, Pennsylvania, for a cargo of coal, while lying at the dock, a diminutive negro man, with a white beard, came on board the vessel, and inquiried of me if this was a British vessel. On being informed that it was, he desired to be secreted, stating that he was a runaway slave, and that his pursuers were on his track. I at once secreted ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... moment he pointed to a diminutive figure standing at the end of the long table, and engaged in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... trusted nobody. But since he had no intention of arresting Pee-wee and since the diminutive captive seemed rather angered than frightened, he released his hold. By a series of wriggles and contortions, Pee-wee adjusted his clothing and settled his neck in his stretched neckband. "Why don't—why—why ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... lofty tapering point, while the sheet is secured to the lower after-corner of the sail. Though many of the smaller dhows have only one mast, that big fellow has two, with a sail of the same shape as the first, but more diminutive. The larger sail is of preposterous proportions, and it seems wonderful that she can carry it without being capsized. It appears to be formed of a strong soft cotton canvas, of extreme whiteness. Those vessels don't tack, but when beating to windward wear by putting ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... be thus situated, especially when a cool breeze blows the mosquitoes and other insects off the water, and relieves you for a time from their incessant attacks. Martin Rattler found it pleasant as he thus lay on his back with his diminutive pet marmoset monkey seated on his breast quietly picking the kernel out of a nut. And Barney O'Flannagan found it pleasant, as he lay extended in the bow of the canoe with his head leaning over the edge gazing abstractedly at his own ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... which spend their entire lives on the stems, sucking the juices through their little beaks, just as the aphids moor themselves to the tender rose-twigs, might be mistaken for thorns during one of their protective masquerades. Again they look like diminutive flocks of fowl, their heads ever pointing in one direction, no matter how the vine may twist and turn - always toward the top of the branch, that they may the better siphon the sap down their tiny throats. Toward the end of summer the females, which have ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... was towed astern, as we had not expected so much sea with a north wind, but for the first time we found how perfectly this diminutive boat was adapted for towing, and after this trial she was never again stowed in the cabin. The bluff bow above, and the keelless, round, smooth bottom below, enabled the dingey to top the sharpest wave, and I often forgot my steering while ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... comes back to me, the General Winfield Scott who lived so much in our eyes then. The oddity may well even at that hour have been present to me of its taking so towering a person to produce such small "drawing-cards"; it was as if some mighty bird had laid diminutive eggs. Mr. Coe, of a truth, laid his all over the place, and though they were not of more than handy size—very small boys could set them up in state on very small desks—they had doubtless a great range of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... a minor revolution of Indians occurred, which resulted in a quaint species of naval engagement on Lake Titicaca, with the native balsas, or rafts, posing as diminutive battleships. In 1661 there was another outbreak. This was organized by Antonio Gallado, who succeeded in gaining possession of the town of La Paz, in which neighbourhood the Spanish authority became almost ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... prettily. Her tail is as much to her, both as ornament and to express emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish senora. One always thinks of these dainty feathered creatures as females. It would seem quite natural to call the wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had not been registered by a diminutive podgy ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... such diligence, and made them so true, so beautiful, and so natural, that they appeared to all who beheld them to be real; and he counterfeited little cameos and other engraved stones and jewels in such a manner, that there was nothing more faithfully imitated or more diminutive to be seen. Among his little figures there are seen some, as in his imitations of cameos and other stones, that are no larger than little ants, and yet all the limbs and all the muscles can be perceived so clearly that one who has not seen them could scarcely believe ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... jacket, on which are sketched in bold brush work every species of venomous insect. On his left shoulder is a scorpion, while centipedes, beetles, and other forms of poisonous insect life cover his back and chest. To his right shoulder is stitched a diminutive pair of red-and-green trousers. The yellow coat is his protection from stings and bites, the tiny trousers from measles, and longevity is secured by a heavy silver padlock, which hangs from his neck by ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... not more than forty-seven inches wide. The cars are quite diminutive, and do not carry more than ten or twelve people. We can ride the length of the road, about two ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... are hardly worthy of the name; in the chief street, by way of an apology for a pavement, there are here and there some huge white slabs of rough-hewn limestone, in consequence of which even carts drive round it instead of through it. In the very middle of an astoundingly dirty square rises a diminutive yellowish edifice with black holes in it, and in these holes sit men in big caps making a pretence of buying and selling. In this place there is an extraordinarily high striped post sticking up into the air, and near the post, in the interests of public order, by command of the authorities, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... would want. Followed a time of giddy glory—one crowded hour of glorious life—when I figured about the deck with attendant shemales in the character of the local celebrity, was introduced to the least unpresentable of the ruffians on board, dogged about the deck by a diminutive Hebrew with a Kodak, the click of which kept time to my progress like a pair of castanets, and filled up in the Captain's room on iced champagne at 8.30 of God's morning. The Captain in question, Cap. Morse, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her diminutive rocker to the stove and settled back against its gay cretonne cushions—a vivid bird of Paradise flamed just where her ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... night at Pamplin's Station. In the evening George Dunn stole a couple of the meanest, most diminutive, runty little hams you ever saw. I helped him eat them, and am willing to bear a fair share of the blame; but a country that can produce such hams needs reconstruction. On the 16th we reached Farmville. The next day we camped eight miles from Burksville. At ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... attention was lost in the irritation and bitterness produced by his recent glimpse of Miss Noemie's iniquitous vitality. But at the end of a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes, he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path near his feet—a diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting species. The pug was sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed him, with his little black muzzle, and was kept from extending his investigation by a large blue ribbon attached to his collar with an enormous rosette ...
— The American • Henry James
... nausea that the thought of food inspired in me, was hunger. I commenced to be sensible of a shameless appetite again; a ravenous lust of food, which grew steadily worse and worse. It gnawed unmercifully in my breast; carrying on a silent, mysterious work in there. It was as if a score of diminutive gnome-like insects set their heads on one side and gnawed for a little, then laid their heads on the other side and gnawed a little more, then lay quite still for a moment's space, and then began afresh, boring noiselessly in, and without ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... forgotten that diminutive of my guest's classical name. It rather pleased me, and I repeated it gently after her, "Phroso, Phroso," and I'm afraid I eyed the little foot ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... just how do you suppose we are going to get this in the pie?" replied Alice, lifting from its position behind the bed a box so huge that the pie itself seemed almost diminutive ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... slipped into a pair of bauchles—that is, the under part of auld boots cut from the legs. As to his face, lo, and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west—yea, the sun blazing in his glory—had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and twinkling; but his nose made up for them—and that it did—being portly in all its dimensions broad and long, as to colour, liker a radish than any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... the window, in a cage hung with yellow gauze. Poppy's mandoline in an easy chair by itself. Poppy's hat on the grand piano, tumbling head over heels among a litter of coffee cups. On the tea-table a pair of shoes that could have belonged to nobody but Poppy, they were so diminutive. In the waste paper basket a bouquet that must have been Poppy's too, it was so enormous. And on the table in the window a Japanese flower-bowl that served as a handy receptacle for cigarette ash and spent vestas. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Revolutions of stability, with Revolutions which consolidated and married the liberties and the interests of the two nations forever,—could he see the fountain of British liberty itself in servitude to France? Could he see with patience a Prince of Orange expelled, as a sort of diminutive despot, with every kind of contumely, from the country which that family of deliverers had so often rescued from slavery, and obliged to live in exile in another country, which owes its liberty to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with thoughts of his own freedom that he had quite forgotten the money which he believed the boys had found. Now it came back to him with redoubled force. Long years of a roving, reckless life had prepared him for almost every emergency. Taking from his pocket a small folding lantern and a diminutive spirit-lamp, he soon got ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Africans assert with considerable confidence, which is corroborated, that the Hel Shual have a tail half a cubit long; that they inhabit a district in the Desert at an immense distance south-east of Marocco; that the Hel El Killeb[148] 200 are in a similar direction; that the latter are diminutive, being about two or three cubits[149] in height; that they exclaim bak, bak, bak, and that they have a few articulate sounds, which they mutually understand among themselves; that they are extremely swift of foot, and run as fast as horses. The Arimaspi of Herodotus ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... from an outer chamber, grated by the iron door of a cell where chance prisoners were sometimes locked, and hung with gilded stars, and firemen's banners, a young figure diminutive, and of pale ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... fumbled in her side pocket and produced a diminutive ivory case. She withdrew a card and handed it to Tallente, with a glance at his ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Lake, the course is west through five diminutive lakes, and across a series of sandy ridges to a small shallow lake, which is the source of Babewendigash River. Between this lake and Seal Lake intervene a high range of mountains—the highest seen on the journey to Lake Michikamau—rising fully one thousand feet above the level of Seal ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... mother's going had left in his heart. He had sympathized with her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp little face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big 'ticks; he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he loved the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, even at three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons to tie up her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got them, too, and used them, but when he took Alix in his arms she was apt to bump his nose violently ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... hinder part of the skull. Altogether this man appeared so different from the rest, that for some time he was supposed to belong to a different class of people, but I afterwards often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark coloured skin and diminutive stature.) ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... went on, these extremely modest dimensions were slightly exceeded, he was an unusually short man. His massive head and broad shoulders gave him when he sate the appearance of greater size, and when he rose to his feet the diminutive stature caused a feeling of surprise. Sydney Smith declared that when Lord John first contested Devonshire the burly electors were disappointed by the exiguity of their candidate, but were satisfied when it was explained to them that he had once been much larger, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a foot in height. His diminutive body seemed to have been fitted into a badly worn skin that was two sizes too large for him, and the scalp of his forehead moved about like an ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... in light colors which would be simply ridiculous on a person of larger proportions. So a lady of majestic appearance should never wear white, but will be seen to the best advantage in black or dark tints. A lady of diminutive stature is dressed in bad taste when she appears in a garment with large figures, plaids or stripes. Neither should a lady of large proportions be seen in similar garments, because, united with her size, they give her a "loud" ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... India vary in size and importance from powerful principalities like the Nizam's State of Hyderabad, with an area of 82,000 miles—nearly equal to that of England and Wales and Scotland—- and a population of over 11 millions, down to diminutive chiefships, smaller than the holdings of a great English landlord. Distributed throughout the whole length and breadth of the peninsula, they display the same extraordinary variety of races and creeds and castes and languages and customs and traditions as ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... goddess befriended me. And many an old jar, packed away in the midst of rubbish in dark recesses now valueless, do I look upon as nevertheless so much gold—its now despised contents one day to disperse themselves upon kings and nobles, in the senate and the theatres. I need not tell you what this diminutive bottle might have been had for, before the Kalends. Yet, by Hercules, should I have sold it even then for less? for should I not have divined its fortune? The wheel is ever turning, turning. But, most excellent Piso, men of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... THE YOUNGER. This distinguished bibliographer, rather than bookseller, lives hard by—in the Rue Git-Le-Coeur. He lives with his father, who superintends the business of the shop. The Rue Git-Le-Coeur is a sorry street—very diminutive, and a sort of cropt copy—to what it should have been, or what it might have been. However, there lives JACQ. CH. BRUNET, FILS: a writer, who will be known to the latest times in the bibliographical world. He will be also thanked as well as known; for his Manuel du Libraire ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... corners, and often they are garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's swords; or, in their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are deficient in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... was unpromising. At birth he was puny and diminutive in a remarkable degree. Weems, in his peculiar fashion, writes, "I have it from good authority, that this great soldier, at his birth, was not larger than a New England lobster, and might easily enough have been put into a quart pot." It was ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... higher they arrived at a small open place near the top of the knob. In its midst was a diminutive log cabin, consisting of only one room. Turner stopped his horses in front of the cabin, dismounted, and requested the girls to do the same. He unbarred the door, and the three entered. By means of flint, steel, tinder, and burnt rags Turner made ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... Society, he felt, he must have, and upon his choice now depended his future fortunes. It was whilst this necessity was pressing on his brain that one morning, when lolling in all the indolence of ignorance allied to wealth, he was surprised at the appearance of a diminutive spaniel, admitted by his porter, who, dressed in a rich scarlet livery, bore a letter in his belt, which he presented with a certain fawning grace to our hero, and hastily departed. This was the first epistle that worthy had ever held in his own ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... the time factor cannot enter into an explanation of this illusion; but the experiments of which I have just spoken seem to point plainly to a very intimate relation between this illusion and the illusions in our judgments of time. We have here presented on a diminutive scale the illusions which we see in our daily experience in comparing past with present stretches of time. It is a well-known psychological experience that a filled time appears short in passing, but long in retrospect, while an empty time appears long in passing, but short in retrospect. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... boil my little potatoes, [MY LITTLE POTATOES.—Thady does not mean by this expression that his potatoes were less than other people's, or less than the usual size. LITTLE is here used only as an Italian diminutive, expressive of fondness.] and put up my bed there, and every post-day I looked in the newspaper, but no news of my master in the House; he never spoke good or bad, but, as the butler wrote down word to my son Jason, was very ill-used by the Government about a place that was promised him and ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... were frightful idols, as represented in the Upsala temple, and the small statues carried by the Scandinavian sailors on their expeditions and set in the place of honor on board their ships, were but diminutive copies of the hideous originals. It is known, moreover, that Odin had existed as a leader of some of their migrations, so that their idolatry resolved ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... effect bettered by many signs of recent refitting. An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was in the air; a gaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diminutive mizzen-mast, which itself looked altogether new. But all this only emphasized the general plainness, reminding one of a respectable woman of the working-classes trying to dress above her station, and soon likely to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... darkness, near us, soliloquized, "Respectful way of addressing a judge of the Supreme Court!" and, being interrogated, the voice informed us that "Rosey" was the vulgate for Judge Rosecranz; whereupon Halicarnassus glossed over the rampant democracy by remarking that the diminutive was probably a term of endearment rather than familiarity; whereupon the manly voice—if I might say it—snickered audibly in the darkness, and we all relapsed into silence. But could anything be more characteristic of a certain phase of the manners of our great and glorious country? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and looking up to us with plaintive whines. The next instant I swung out of my saddle, and, bending down, raised the unfortunate creature in my arms, when I saw, to my amazement, that she was evidently a full-grown woman, but of very diminutive stature, being only about four feet six inches in height. Moreover she was in a most shockingly emaciated condition, and on her back was a close network of scarcely healed scars, which looked as though ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or pocket edition. BOSWELL. The latter part of this note is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... beholder like stars. The hands of Fayaway were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman's life. Her feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those which peep from beneath the skirts of a Lima lady's dress. The skin of this young creature, from continual ablutions and the use of mollifying ointments, was ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... sakes only.' The force of the word when placed at the end is peculiar. Then it often has a diminutive or disparaging signification. 'He lived for their sakes,' and not for any more worthy reason. 'He gave sixpence only,' is an insinuation ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... last night, sir," he announced. "He has just rung down to say that if a gentlemen called to see him he could be shown up. Here, page," he went on, turning to a diminutive youth in the background, "show this gentleman to ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... visitors. "Show them in at once," says Florence, quickly, as if to forestall any possible objection from her father. The negro withdraws, and presently, with a rapid swish of skirts, in marches a very spick and span young lady, her diminutive but exceedingly trim figure dressed like an animated fashion-plate. She is Miss Edna Hill, and she comes brisk and dashing, with cheeks afire from the cold, bringing into the dull, dreamy room the life and freshness of the wintry day without. Behind ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... choir. His appearance is that of a veteran warrior, and he walked alone, with his numerous suite following at a respectful distance, preceded by heralds and ushers, who received him with marked attention, more certainly than any of the other Ambassadors. The Queen looked very diminutive, and the effect of the procession itself was spoilt by being too crowded; there was not interval enough between the Queen and the Lords and others going before her. The Bishop of London (Blomfield) preached a very good sermon. The different actors in the ceremonial were ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... but varying shape and colour—diminutive bodies ovate and round—brown, grey, glossy black with brown edgings, pink with grey quarterings and grey fringe, whence radiate five sprawling slender "legs," a foot or so long. Though doubtful in appearance, more in consonance with the creepy imagery of a nightmare than a reality of the better ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... we met a large party with seventy loaded mules. It was interesting to hear the wild cries of the muleteers, and to watch the long descending string of the animals; they appeared so diminutive, there being nothing but the black mountains with which they could be compared. When near the summit, the wind, as generally happens, was impetuous and extremely cold. On each side of the ridge we had to pass over broad bands of perpetual snow, which were ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... noon a diminutive, mild-looking gentleman, noticeable for his childlike manner and a pair of large round spectacles, came alongside the Egeria in a shore-boat. It appeared that he bore a visitor's ticket for the afternoon function and had arrived thus early by invitation of one ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... This diminutive and pretty plant is a native of Australia, and was introduced into this country in 1823. It is hardy, herbaceous, and perennial; it is, however, sometimes said to be only annual, which may have been inferred from the fact of its perishing in winter in this climate when grown ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... either. Their monopolies, no longer redeemed by the stately genius of the Kembles, the pathos of Miss O'Neill, or the fiery passion of Kean, were already menaced, and were soon about to fall; but the crowd of diminutive but sparkling substitutes, which have since taken their place, had not yet appeared, and half-price at Drury Lane or Covent Garden was a dreary distraction after a morning of desk work. There were no Alhambras ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... possible to stand upright in the centre aisle of the van; and a little sliding window opened onto the driver's seat in front. Altogether it was a very neat affair. The windows in front and back were curtained and a pot of geraniums stood on a diminutive shelf. I was amused to see a sandy Irish terrier curled up on a bright Mexican blanket in ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... of women. In every house on either side of the way a similar picture of attentive patience was revealed: a narrow Moorish archway with a wooden door set back against the wall to show a steep and diminutive staircase winding up into mystery; upon the highest stair a common candlestick with a lit candle guttering in it, and, immediately below, a girl, thickly painted, covered with barbarous jewels and magnificently dressed, her ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... as a very partial shelter for the men and primarily as a stable for an extraordinary water-wagon, composed of a wooden barrel on two wheels with shafts which would not possibly accommodate anything larger than a diminutive donkey (but in which I myself was to walk not infrequently, as it proved); parallel to the second stone wall, but at a safe distance from it, stretched a couple of iron girders serving as a barbarously cold seat for any unfortunate ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... of the mind. Vernon did so until the plastic vision interwound with reality alarmingly. This is the embrace of a Melusine who will soon have the brain if she is encouraged. Slight dalliance with her makes the very diminutive seem as big as life. He jumped to his feet, rattled his throat, planted firmness on his brows and mouth, and attacked the dream-giving earth with tremendous long strides, that his blood might be lively at the throne of understanding. Miss Middleton ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... depicted thereon in vermillion landscapes: corpulent mandarins surrounded by their lantern-bearers; learned men lay stupefied with opium, sleeping under their parasols; young girls with elevated eyebrows, stumbled upon their diminutive feet swathed in bandages. The carpet of a manufacture unknown to Europeans, was strewn with fruits and flowers, so true to nature that they might have deceived a bee. Some great artist of Pekin had painted on the silk which covered ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... subsisted, under the reign of Diocletian, each of them singly, a visible and important object in the military history of the Roman empire. A few years afterwards, these gigantic bodies were shrunk to a very diminutive size; and when seven legions, with some auxiliaries, defended the city of Amida against the Persians, the total garrison, with the inhabitants of both sexes, and the peasants of the deserted country, did not exceed the number of twenty thousand persons. [131] From this fact, and from similar examples, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the crowd made a remark about the diminutive size of the speaker, and the ludicrous figure he would cut as a general, at which he became ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... the follies and vanities of individuals and of parties are ridiculed by the representation of their practice among diminutive beings. Sir Robert Walpole suffered in the person of Flimnap the Lilliputian Premier, Tories and Whigs in the High-Heels and Low-Heels, Catholics and Protestants in the Big-endians and Small-endians. In the "Voyage to Brobdingnag," ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... on the top to the deep channel below. The thin surface of soil sustains a shabby, stinted growth of fir, oak, and other trees, which seldom grow above the height of tall shrubbery. From the crevices of the rock also may occasionally be seen a tree of diminutive dimensions springing out with scarcely a particle of visible sustenance for its roots. The shrubbery upon the peak of this acclivity presents a curious appearance as it hangs over the ascent, not unlike the bushy eye-brows ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... out." This complicated matters considerably. He consulted his cash-books, bank-books, bill-books, sales-books, order-books, ledgers, etcetera, etcetera, again and again, for hours at a time, without arriving at any satisfactory result. He went to his diminutive office early in the morning, and sat there late at night; and did not, by so doing, improve his finances a whit, although he succeeded in materially injuring his health. He worried the life of poor meek Grinder to such an extent that that unfortunate man went ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... "butter-goose" but the American term (if we had the custom) would be "the whetter." On a side-table there are various plates of anchovies, cheese, chopped onions, raw salt herring, and bread, all in diminutive slices, while glasses of corresponding size surround a bottle of kuemmel, or cordial of caraway-seed. This, at least, was the zakouski on board the Valamo, and to which our valiant captain addressed himself, after first bowing and crossing himself towards the Byzantine Christ and Virgin in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... animals now passing away and leaving no representatives of their greatness to future ages? On land at least that is very probable. Man, diminutive man, who, if he walked on all fours, would be no bigger than a silly sheep, and who only partially disguises his native smallness by his acquired habit of walking erect on what ought to be his hind legs—man has upset the whole balanced ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... seem to have received most forcibly concerning Douglas, and which was perhaps responsible for his nickname, was the contrast between his diminutive stature and the enormous power of his voice—trained no doubt in addressing the monster meetings of the West, where tens of thousands crowded everywhere to hear him speak. Along with this went the sense of an overwhelming ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... described, about 8,000, or nearly one-sixth, belong to the first of the two classes, and of these nearly 2,000 are grasses. In cold and temperate climates the species of this most interesting and important family are comparatively diminutive in size. In our climate, for instance, the grasses are somewhat remarkable among vegetables for their humble stature, and their inconspicuous appearance; while in the warmer regions of the earth, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... sung, and each endeavored to drown the voice of the other. Now they crouch as they dance, looking diminutive and contemptible, as those who are degrading themselves in their most sacred duties. Then they rise up, and show their full height. Stalwart warriors as they are, their keen eyes flash as they glance ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... have to start at the bottom?" she had protested. "You have never been quite fair to him, Clay." His boyish diminutive had stuck to him. "You expect him to know as much about the mill now as you do, after all ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to milk the cows," Landy explained as he rode up to Pinnacle Point the next morning leading Frosty, a rangy bay with a diminutive new saddle on his back. "Alice don't like my milkin' methods. I jist turn the calves in with the cows and let nature take her course, so she lets Jim do the milkin'. Put on yer jacket, son, hit's crimpy around the edges, and let's ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... by the waiter bringing coffee. Kitty Tailleur had come out on to the veranda. She was pouring out Grace Keating's coffee, and talking to her in another voice, the one that she kept for children and for animals, and for all diminutive and helpless things. She was saying that Miss Keating (whom she called Bunny) was a dear little white rabbit, and ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... a moment, and then bent down to open the little gate. His stalwart figure, in the diminutive enclosure, reduced it to the appearance ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Greek diminutive epullia is here correctly expressed by the German verschen, but versicle would not ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the rising sun where floated a glimmer of ever-varying colours, like those on a pigeon's neck, were miniature mirrors or enormous beryls. Everywhere was magnificence, at once refined and stupendous; if it was not the most diminutive of palaces, it was the most gigantic of jewel-cases. A house for Mab or ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... smaller than he, like a diminutive, sturdy steam-tug; and yet if she could have carried him, she would have ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... discovered that it counted among its inhabitants no fewer than three species of insects of peculiar interest to me, and from that time I haunted it, going there day after day to spend long hours in pursuit of my small quarry. Not to kill and preserve their diminutive corpses in a cabinet, but solely to witness the comedy of their brilliant little lives. And as I used to take my luncheon in my pocket I fell into the habit of going to a particular spot, some opening in the dense wood with a big tree to lean against and give me shade, where ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... artificially constructed buemini Bohemian) can be upheld. Polo states expressly that these wild oxen are called beyamini (scil. by the natives), and evidently alludes to a native Tibetan term. The gayal is styled in Tibetan ba-men (or ba-man), derived from ba ('cow'), a diminutive form of which is beu. Marco Polo appears to have heard some dialectic form of this ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... landlord gave him, which appeared to hold only about a thimblefull of oil. Oscar thought it was a stingy contrivance, and had some notion of sitting up to see how long it would burn; but his eyelids grew heavy, and he gave up the idea. Throwing off his clothing, he extinguished his diminutive lamp, and took possession of one of the beds in the room, of which there were two. As he composed himself to sleep, a slight sense of lonesomeness stole over him, when he remembered that he was alone in a strange house and a strange city, more than a hundred miles from his home; and almost unconsciously ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... Meantime diminutive Louis Quillan had led her to the window-seat beneath the corridor, and sat holding one plump trifle of a hand, the, while her speech fluttered bird-like from this topic to that; and be regarded Nelchen Thorn with an abysmal content. The fates, he considered, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... buried in Regie's money-box, and the other two immediately lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, accompanied by Boulou, a diminutive yellow-and-white dog of French extraction. Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a certain hurried arrogance about his hind-legs, but it was only manner. He was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... It is the diminutive of plata, silver, to which it appears very similar; platina being a silver-colored metal, in ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... in the woods and Sam's recital from the stump, the three friends emerged again upon the road, and a belated farmer driving home half asleep on the seat of his wagon caught their attention. With the skill of an Indian boy the diminutive Morris sprang upon the wagon and thrust a ten dollar bill into the farmer's hand. "Lead us, O man of the soil!" he shouted, "Lead us to a gilded palace of sin! Take us to a saloon! The life oil gets ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Chango Creek, and in a small bay or roadstead about a mile long by perhaps half that width formed by six islands, the largest of which was nearly two miles long by half-a-mile wide, while the smallest and most easterly of all was a very diminutive affair, of perhaps not more than an acre in area, densely overgrown, like the rest of them, with thick, impenetrable bush. In the very centre of this small roadstead, to which we had been piloted by the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... who was conspicuous at all of the meetings, a man of pinched features and diminutive form, a veritable Pope Leo, as it were, makes a motion, as soon as the meeting opens, that three of the members be heard, and if their stories in any way coincide with the general views of the others, the pledge of the remaining men, that they hold equally strong ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... itself. He had come into view of the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum; recollecting a couplet from the pen of the disrespectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a fall: his head and his elbow responded simultaneously ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is, in tympanidis rogum inlatus est. This passage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning both the reading and the sense as any passage in the whole treatise. Tympanum is used for a timbrel or drum, tympanidia a diminutive of it. Lambinus says tympana "were sticks with which the tyrant used to beat the condemned." P. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... huge loads of luggage with which the English commonly travel. As I looked on the passers by, I was again struck with what I had observed almost immediately on entering the town—the portly figures and florid complexions of some, and the very diminutive stature and sallow countenances of others. Among the crowds about the coach, was a ruddy round-faced man in a box-coat and a huge woollen cravat, walking about and occasionally giving a look at the porters, whom we took to be the coachman, so well did his appearance agree with the description ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Did not I dream that the good captain would bring pink silk stockings? and are they not my own this minute?" And she thrust a diminutive foot from beneath the hem of her gown, regarding it with admiration. "And did not I dream that Tomaso and Liseta would marry? What was thy dream, ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of potatoes in a third, never forgetting the egg-sauce in the first, and making an impartial round of basting and stirring with the most useful of spoons every minute. Besides these cares, the Captain had to keep his eye on a diminutive frying-pan, in which some sausages were hissing and bubbling in a most musical manner; and there was never such a radiant cook as the Captain looked, in the height and heat of these functions: it being impossible to say whether ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... came in sight of what appeared to be a herd of cattle in the far distance. In eager expectation he galloped towards them and found that his conjectures were correct. They were cattle in charge of one of that lowest of the human race, a Bushman. The diminutive, black-skinned, and monkey-faced creature was nearly naked. He carried a sheepskin kaross, or blanket, on his left shoulder, and a knobbed stick, or "kerrie," in his ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... time to kill the earwigs for his patient before they had pinched him to death. Erasmus showed Mr. Panton the experiment of killing one of these insects, by placing it within a magic circle of oil, and prevailed upon him to destroy his diminutive enemies with castor oil. When this hallucination, to speak in words of learned length, when this hallucination was removed, there was a still more difficult task, to cure our hypochondriac of the three remote causes ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... as those experiences were, from all vistas and from sympathy with things remote, they would contain a closed circle of interests, a flying glimpse of eternity. So an infant living in his mystical limbo, without trailing in a literal sense any clouds of glory from elsewhere, might well repeat on a diminutive scale the beatific vision, insomuch as the only function of which he was conscious at all might be perfectly fulfilled by him and felt in its ideal import. Sucking and blinking are ridiculous processes, perhaps, but they may bring a thrill and satisfaction no less ideal than ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of Redman's Farm, looking about him with a supercilious benevolence, like a man conscious of bestowing a distinction. He was inwardly sensible of a sort of condescension in entering so diminutive and homely a place—a kind of half amusing disproportion between Jos. Larkin, Esq., of the Lodge, worth, already, L27,000, and on the high road to greatness, and the trumpery little place ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... company, being under a temporary engagement to the master of the house, to serve him in such work as might be wanted about the house and stables, was a youth, of perhaps eighteen, of quite an ordinary, and even singular appearance. His figure was low and slight, and he was made to appear the more diminutive, perhaps, by his dress, which consisted of short trousers, a long, coarse jacket, and a flat woollen cap, drawn down to the eyebrows. His hair, hanging, in lank locks, to his shoulders, was light and sandy, and his face was deeply freckled; while a pair of long, falling eyelashes contributed ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... such as the number of toes, the peculiarities of the bill, etc., it is impossible to overlook the peculiar form which is characteristic of each. No one who is familiar with the outline of the Parrot will fail to recognize any member of that Family by a general form which is equally common to the diminutive Nonpareil, the gorgeous Ara, and the high-crested Cockatoo. Neither will any one, who has ever observed the small head, the straight bill, the flat back, and stiff tail of the Woodpecker, hesitate to identify the family form ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... seen against the blue of a June sky at Southsea. Nor was the whole effect bettered by many signs of recent refitting. An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was in the air; a gaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diminutive mizzen-mast, which itself looked altogether new. But all this only emphasized the general plainness, reminding one of a respectable woman of the working-classes trying to dress above her station, and soon likely to give ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... pause to note that energy and will could do much toward making even a pinnacle rock a naval base; for we see the gigantic fortress of Heligoland erected on what was little but a shoal; and we see the diminutive water areas of Malta and Gibraltar made to hold in safety the war-ships of the ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the vocabulary on memorable occasions—to no avail; and although she had long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... the mountains, living by the chase and by plunder. This portion were termed boshmen, or bushmen, and have still retained that appellation: living in extreme destitution, sleeping in caves, constantly in a state of starvation, they soon dwindled down to a very diminutive race, and have continued so ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... justice, the word for any language, everywhere translatable, a circular note, to be exchanged internationally with a general meaning, wholesale, in the course of the European concert. But bruttino is a soothing diminutive, a diminutive that forbears to express contempt, a diminutive that implies innocence, and is, moreover, guarded by a hesitating adverb, shrugging in the rear—"rather than not." "Rather ugly than not, and ugly in a little way that we need say few words about—the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... loveliness. But we miss, many of us, the flowering of the oaks in early spring, and we do not realize that this family of trees, most notable for rugged strength, has its bloom of beginning at the other end of the scale, in flowers of delicate coloring and rather diminutive size. ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... little earthly maiden that could be fancied. Eleanor was not under size indeed; but so much like her own wild flowers in pure simpleness and sweet natural good qualities that Mrs. Caxton was sometimes inclined to bestow the endearing diminutive upon her; so sound and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Assembly Room, which seems to me to have been built upon a design of Palladio, and might be converted into an elegant place of worship; but it is indifferently contrived for that sort of idolatry which is performed in it at present: the grandeur of the fane gives a diminutive effect to the little painted divinities that are adorned in it, and the company, on a ball-night, must look like an assembly of fantastic fairies, revelling by moonlight among the columns ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... circling above, General Anthoine stepped out in front of the row of flags. His powerful frame seemed to suggest the cuirass of the knights of old, as, silhouetted against the cloudy sky, he towered above the two diminutive aviators near whom he was standing. The band stopped playing, and the general spoke, his voice rising and falling in the wind, and swelling to a higher pitch when the elements were too rebellious. He was speaking almost on the spot ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... of all these movements, which he excited or checked according as they were favorable to him or otherwise. He caused the most diminutive to be selected from the prisoners taken from the French, and exhibited them to the people, that the latter might derive courage from the sight of their weakness; and yet he emptied Moscow of every kind of supplies, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... contraction of chaval, a form cognate with chavoro the diminutive of chavo, a lad. Chaval is still common in Spain, both among the Gypsies and the lower ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the guests sung songs; another neighed; a third shouted in tragic verse; a fourth spoke Latin; and a fifth preached temperance; a sixth gave himself out for a professor, and his lecture was nearly as follows:—"The earth, my friends, is a cylinder, and men are but little diminutive dots spread over its surface, apparently at hazard; but voila, the cylinder takes a fancy to turn, the little dots are hustled about, some here, others there, and so emit a sort of vibratory sound, some frequently, others more rarely; and this is the marvellous, complicated music ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... to cherish and educate. My little brother monopolised the name of Evans, and living for some time after I was christened, I got the Dutch appellation of my maternal grandfather, for my share of the family nomenclature, which happened to be Cornelius—Corny was consequently the diminutive by which I was known to all the whites of my acquaintance, for the first sixteen or eighteen years of my life, and to my parents as long as they lived. Corny Littlepage is not a bad name, in itself, and I trust they who do me the favour to ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... wash their faces and be decent. Now I can't stay here any longer, so good-by for the present." She took up a little basket containing an old pair of gloves, large scissors, and a ball of twine, and walked briskly away to attend to the plants in her diminutive conservatory. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the deck, and serves to balance the lofty tapering point, while the sheet is secured to the lower after-corner of the sail. Though many of the smaller dhows have only one mast, that big fellow has two, with a sail of the same shape as the first, but more diminutive. The larger sail is of preposterous proportions, and it seems wonderful that she can carry it without being capsized. It appears to be formed of a strong soft cotton canvas, of extreme whiteness. Those vessels don't tack, but when beating to windward wear ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... means to ascertain his age, and must have concluded him only six months old from his small size; but from his teeth and walking alone, he was more likely to have been two years old, and his diminutive size was probably occasioned by the miseries of the climate, and wretchedness of every kind to which these outcasts of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... horse should be in harmonious proportion with that of the rider. A very young or short lady is in no less false a position, as regards grace, on a lofty steed, than a tall, full-grown woman, on a diminutive pony. For ladies of the general stature, a horse measuring from fifteen to fifteen and a half hands, at the point of the shoulder, is usually considered, as regards height, more desirable than ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... a closely packed group of islands, near to the main land of China, and about 500 miles to the northward of Amoy. These islands, many of them very diminutive, are so close to each other, that on threading them to approach the town of Chusan, the channel wears the appearance of a small river branching out into every direction. If the leading marks were removed it would be a complete marine labyrinth, and a boat might pull and pull in and out ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... he say?" asked Danny Griswold, who had been prancing the deck like a diminutive admiral, stopping now and blowing a cloud of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... snorting flame and its eyes smouldering fires, but instead its eyes were neat little windows with tidy curtains, for the monster turned out to be three diminutive houses on wheels drawn by a huge motor. What their end and purpose might be, is imaginable. If it is for the comfort of the High Command en campagne, the great clumsy procession rivaling the speed of a snail is a heap of ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... gloves at table again, or even out of doors. Then he was in trouble with his cigar, and finally I noticed that he threw it under the table and stamped upon it, and produced his favourite dirty Charles the First pipe, the diminutive bowl of which he filled continually with what smokers call "dottles." He was then apparently perfectly happy, as indeed he always looked when puffing away at his antique clay. Years afterwards, when sketching a background for a Punch drawing in the East End, I noticed some labourers returning ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... a small sombre room within, with a bare yellow-washed floor and ragged curtains at the little window. In a corner was a diminutive altar draped with threadbare lace. The red glow of the taper lighted a cheap print of St. Joseph and a brazen crucifix. The human element in the room was furnished by a little, wizened yellow woman, who, black-robed, turbaned, and stern, sat before an uncertain table ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... dearer to the heart of the adventurous than anything driven by steam. Here, mayhap, will an untravelled traveller make his first acquaintance with the birch-bark canoe, and learn to call it by the affectionate diminutive, "Birch." Earlier in life there was no love lost between him and whatever bore that name. Even now, if the untravelled one's first acquaintance be not distinguished by an unlovely ducking, so much the worse. The ducking must come. Caution must be learnt by catastrophe. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... eyes were fix'd, like his Who throws away his days in idle chase Of the diminutive, when thus I heard The more than father warn me: "Son! our time Asks thriftier using. Linger not: away." Thereat my face and steps at once I turn'd Toward the sages, by whose converse cheer'd I journey'd on, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and weary whom we turn to watch if by some strange chance one passes. The Phillips' kitchen was a cheerless place, in spite of the mirror that was installed in state over the side-board and the wax flowers. Its one window looked upon a diminutive back yard, a low broken wall and another row of similar two-storied houses. On the plastered walls were some shelves bearing a limited supply of crockery. Over the grated fireplace was a long high shelf whereon stood various pots ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... which are sold in the shops in the neighbourhood of the Lion Monument at Lucerne. In these last two instances we see that the greater is made the pattern of the less; and it is important for us to remember this; we are not to suppose that God showed to Moses a diminutive tabernacle, a sort of doll's house, in accordance with which he was to construct his house of skins, or that He impressed upon him the nature of the priestly and sacrificial worship by altars and offerings of a lower degree, of small quantities. It is more like ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... and beauty; the premature death of Linus, the burthen of the ancient lament of Greece, was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithynian Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and Enoch, whose early death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of days of the solar year; a brief space when compared ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the volition. It was the commonest of synonyms alike for 'self will' or 'stubbornness'—in which sense it still survives in 'wilful'—and for 'lust,' or 'sensual passion.' It also did occasional duty for its own diminutive 'wish,' for 'caprice,' for 'good-will,' and for 'free consent' (as nowadays ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... pasture plant for stock, they do not relish it so highly as some other pasture plants; when forming seed, it is least valuable for horses, owing to the extent to which it salivates them. Its diminutive habit of growth unfits it for making meadows, unless in conjunction with other hay plants. In nutritive properties, it is placed ahead of medium red clover. Some growers have spoken highly of it as a ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... while {Greek: obelos} and {Greek: obolos}, {Greek: soros} and {Greek: so:ros}, are probably the same words. So too in Latin 'penna' and 'pinna' differ only in form, and signify alike a 'wing'; while yet 'penna' has come to be used for the wing of a bird, 'pinna' (its diminutive 'pinnaculum', has given us 'pinnacle') for that of a building. So is it with 'Thrax' a Thracian, and 'Threx' a gladiator; with 'codex' and 'caudex'; 'forfex' and 'forceps'; 'anticus' and 'antiquus'; 'celeber' and 'creber'; 'infacetus' and 'inficetus'; 'providentia', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... a sound so loud and profound from thy belly diminutive send, And shall not the high and the infinite sky go thundering on without end? For both, you will find, on an impulse of wind and similar ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... room. The house was very small, and had a close, musty smell, as if no fresh air ever got into it. Totty's chamber was a poor, bare little retreat, with low, cracked, grimy ceiling, and one scrap of carpet on the floor, just by the diminutive bed. On a table lay the provisions she had that afternoon brought in from Mrs. Bower's. On the mantel-piece was a small card, whereon was printed an announcement of the friendly lead; at the bead stood the name of a public-house, with that of its proprietor; ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... woodland moss, I used to be brought for recompense of having been "very good," and there I used to find a lovely-looking lady, who was to me the fitting divinity of this shrine of pleasant awfulness. She bore a sweet Italian diminutive for her Christian name, added to one of the noblest old ducal names of Venice, which was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... there was a strange mingling of the pitiful and comic—among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were all volunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer on account of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feet high, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire, Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of industrial England and its mid-Victorian cruelties. Others were from London, banded together in a battalion of the Middlesex ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... their poor little drop of silk. Those cocoons which correspond with the smallest allowance of food contain only a dead and shrivelled larva; others, in whose case the provisions were less markedly decreased, contain females in the adult form, but of very diminutive size, comparable with that of the males, or even smaller. As for the controls which I was careful to leave, they confirm the fact that I had males in the part near the orifice of the reed and females in the part near the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... and until Mr. Tescheron withdrew, she kept the quilt entirely over her head, for her womanly spirit had not yet been stiffened to defiantly glare at man by those delicate touches—the pasting on of her front hair-piece; the tying on of her back switch to the diminutive stump of original tresses; the proper adjustment of her dental fixtures, her collar and tie and the various articles constituting the sub-structure necessary for their support. We cannot go into the details, because the plans and specifications ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... It was the name of boyhood, Seenou, the diminutive, that fell from Habib's lips. And he could ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... again began to roll a cigarette. But the fine-cut tobacco in his chintz pouch began to show signs of giving out, and he asked S. to lend him a little cigarette. [Footnote: PAPIROSTCHKA, diminished diminutive of PAPIROSKA, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... words; the letters "m", "l", and "v" are not roots. The word "do" is not a noun, because "d" is not a root. The word "plej" is not a plural, because "ple" is not a root. The word "meti", to put, has nothing to do with the diminutive suffix "et", because "m" is not ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a bright and secluded spot for a comfortable snooze. I revel in snatching naps in the open sunshine, and this was a place that struck me as being perfectly ideal for that purpose. It was on the brow of a diminutive hillock covered with fresh, lovely grass of a particularly vivid green. In the rear and on either side of it, the ground rose and fell in pleasing alternation for an almost interminable distance, whilst in front ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character. It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards him; such cheerful, open, honest expressions and such fine muscular bodies. I never saw any of the diminutive Portuguese, with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Hayti; and, considering the enormous healthy-looking black population, it will be wonderful if, at some future day, it does ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... this time, and, what with those it already contained, even a modicum of peace seemed out of the question. Here, for instance, was found living with the Mexicans by the plaza a quarrelsome fellow named Juan Trujillo, better known by the sobriquet of Juan Chiquito or "Little John," which his diminutive stature had earned for him. This worthy is represented as a constant disturber of the peace, and he met the tragic fate which his reckless life had invited. From being a trusted friend he had incurred the enmitv of a noted character named Charley ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... lamp in Eastern glass of many colours swinging somewhere at the farther end, and we found our way down to a low door in the side of the passage. This brought us into a small square room which gave the impression of being sunk below the level of the street. There were diminutive windows in the outer wall, but they were close to the low ceiling and though the glorious light from without tried hard to come in, it was successfully obstructed by little rush blinds of red and green. The rushes were placed vertically side by side and fastened together ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... have vanquished. The confidence, which this sense of success will give the pupil, will probably, in his own opinion, be thought well worthy the price. Neither his reason nor his will was in fault; all he wanted, was strength to break the diminutive chains of habit; chains which, it seems, have power to enfeeble their captives exactly in proportion to the length of time they ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the Pacific Ocean, for a voyage on it is one of the most monotonous things that can be imagined. The appearance of another ship is a rare occurrence; and the water is so calm that it resembles a stream. Very frequently I used to start up from my desk, thinking that I was in some diminutive room ashore; and my mistake was the more natural, as we had three horses, a dog, several pigs, hens, geese, and a canary bird on board, all respectively neighing, barking, grunting, cackling, and singing, as if ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... gully next morning, following the main street, which changed direction every few yards, "paved" with three-inch cobbles, the sidewalks two feet wide, leaving one pedestrian to jump off it each time two met. A diminutive streetcar drawn by mules with jingling bells passed now and then. Peons swarmed here also, but there was by no means the abject poverty of San Luis Potosi, and Americans seemed in considerable favor, as their mines in the vicinity give the town its livelihood. I was seeking the famous old ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... girl. 'Twas a year of grace indeed, for the little stranger happened to be none other than Anne Oldfield, whose elegance of manner, charm of voice and action and loveliness of face would in time make her the most delightful comedienne of her day. Perhaps she found no instant welcome, this diminutive maiden who came smiling into existence laden with a message from the sunshine; her father was richer in ancestry than guineas, and the arrival of another daughter may have seemed an honour hardly worth the bestowal.[A] But Thalia laughed, as well she might, and even the stern features of Melpomene ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... priest, heedless of the admonition, suffered himself to be led by the child; and together they passed slowly out into the living room, through the kitchen, and thence into the diminutive rose garden, the pride ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Precursor of the Saviour or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name Jean or Jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. To render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive forms of Jeannot and Jeannette. On the banks of the Meuse the peasants had a particular liking for these diminutives at once unpretentious and affectionate: Jacquot, Pierrollot, Zabillet, Mengette, Guillemette.[166] After the wife of the scholar, Thiesselin, the child was named Jeannette. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... with the diminutive bahira. Bahr also signifies a. river, especially one with a large body of water, e.g. the Nile, and is sometimes used to designate the dry bed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... glittering in the darkness. But, seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry, which was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck, which looked like a hen's leg, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... constant and settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in ish, as greenish, bluish; adverbs in ly, as dully, openly; substantives in ness, as vileness, faultiness; were less diligently sought, and sometimes have been omitted, when I had no authority that invited me to insert them; not that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... his pocket a diminutive vial, the smallest I had ever seen, in which were a number of little white granules, about the size of the head of a pin. A printed label was wound around the vial, and it bore the word "Arsenicum." It passed from hand to hand, and all ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... the great pink and gray blanket which had been Margaret's friend and companion for several months, and with it her own diminutive piece of work, a doily that she was supposed to be embroidering. Rita lay watching them with bright eyes, her eyebrows still nearer together than was desirable. At last, "Well," she said again. There was impatience and irritation in the tone, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... machine no one yet really knows, but we had to be ignominiously towed, to the great amusement of the natives, at the end of a long rope by the power of a diminutive donkey which finally came along. The beast did not look as though he could draw a perambulator, but he buckled down to it with a will, and brought us safely through the half-kilometre or so of crooked streets which led to the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the stage as well as in the auditorium. The airy chariot, on which the wicked king Ravana was carrying Sita away, paused in the air. The king of the Nagas (serpents) ceased breathing flames, the monkey soldiers hung motionless on the trees, and Rama himself, clad in light blue and crowned with a diminutive pagoda, came to the front of the stage and pronounced in pure English speech, in which he thanked us for the honour of our presence. Then new bouquets, pansu-paris, and rose-water, and, finally, we reached home about four a.m. Next morning we learned that the performance ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... uncertain derivation, but forus, of which it is clearly the diminutive, is used by Virgil for the ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... for a seat in the saddle or on a bench in a springless wagon. Naturally, the women and children were relegated to the wagons, and were there huddled together like so much live stock destined for the market. The men scrambled and even fought for the diminutive donkeys that were to bear them over the mountain pass. A circus knows no comedy like ours on that occasion. It is true we had but twelve miles to traverse, and some of these were level; but by and by the road dipped and climbed and swerved and plunged into the depths, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... presence of half a dozen ladies and gentlemen he scarcely recognized his sister as the centre of attraction, or knew that Miss Cicely's effusive greeting of Maggie was her first one. "I knew he was dying to see you after all you had BOTH passed through, and I brought him straight here," said the diminutive Machiavelli, meeting the astonished gaze of her father and the curious eyes of her sister with perfect calmness, while Maggie, full of gratitude and admiration of her handsome brother, forgot his momentary obliviousness, and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
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