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Pygmy   Listen
noun
Pygmy  n.  (pl. pygmies)  (Written also pigmy)  
1.
(Class. Myth.) One of a fabulous race of dwarfs who waged war with the cranes, and were destroyed.
2.
Hence, a short, insignificant person; a dwarf.
3.
One of a race of Central African Negritos found chiefly in the great forests of the equatorial belt. They are the shortest of known races, the adults ranging from less than four to about five feet in stature. They are timid and shy, dwelling in the recesses of the forests, though often on good terms with neighboring Negroes. "Pygmies are pygmies still, though perched on Alps. And pyramids are pyramids in vales."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pygmy" Quotes from Famous Books



... flash and away! A midget bejeweled mid flowers at play! A snip of a birdling, the blossom-bells' king, A waif of the sun-beams on quivering wing! O prince of the fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... are victims. If I take a census of the population of a tile, many a time I find the Dioxys and the Mason-bee in almost equal proportions. The parasite has wiped out half the colony. To complete the disaster, it is not unusual for the grub-eaters, the Leucopsis and her rival, the pygmy Chalcis, to have decimated the other half. I say nothing of Anthrax sinuata, whom I sometimes see coming from the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds; her larva preys on the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... matter until the idea of fighting Conway became a part of me. I fought him in imagination during school-hours; I dreamed of fighting with him at night, when he would suddenly expand into a giant twelve feet high, and then as suddenly shrink into a pygmy so small that I couldn't hit him. In this latter shape he would get into my hair, or pop into my waistcoat-pocket, treating me with as little ceremony as the Liliputians showed Captain Lemuel Gulliver—all of which was not pleasant, to ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... have been made which fit in admirably with our argument. Rediscoveries, perhaps, we should call them, for they were imperfectly known in ancient times, but only recently have they fairly come within human ken. We refer to the Pygmy tribes of the African forests, not definitely offered hitherto as aids to the elucidation of this problem, yet which seem to adapt themselves closely to it, and certainly help essentially in filling the gap between civilized ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... in the Triassic, some being formidable creatures as large as alligators. They were still of the primitive Paleozoic types. Their pygmy descendants of more modern types are not found until later, salamanders appearing first in the Cretaceous, and frogs at the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... explosive were being hurled through the air as if Atlas were hurling stars about. There was something elemental, and superhuman about such colossal force. One felt like a pygmy in a ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... the Egyptian's eyes flashed, and, with an amazingly low bend of his supple spine, he announced that, more than three hours since, he had discovered a most abominable caricature in clay, representing Caesar as a soldier in a horrible pygmy form. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had overcome the mastodon; the pygmy had imprisoned ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... the scientific observation of pygmy people are illustrated in No. 21 and Nos. 22-25 respectively. Though much has been written about the Pygmies, Messrs. Skeat and Blagden's account of the Semang people is by far the most thorough ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... sword I leaned upon it, looking down on the dead body of my foeman, and as I thought of the battle I had just fought and won a great idea was born in my brain—the outcome of this and the suggestion that Perry had made within the city of Phutra. If skill and science could render a comparative pygmy the master of this mighty brute, what could not the brute's fellows accomplish with the same skill and science. Why all Pellucidar would be at their feet—and I would be their king ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... butler's pantry! Our dear, natty little buttons! Bullets glide off him!" snarled Pilzer, who had set out to win a bronze cross, only to see it won by a pygmy. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... pygmy skeleton was discovered near Los Angeles which is claimed to be about twenty thousand years old, but we do not know whether this man knew how to build a fire or not. We do know, however, that the American camper was here on this continent when our Bible was ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... either Nile or pygmy, is an animal of serene mind and steady habits. Their appetites work with clock- like regularity, and require no winding. I can not recall that any one of our five hippos was ever sick for a day, or missed a meal. When ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... "And it is not Paris alone, it is all France, which, with us, entreats you to decide upon delivering her from this tyrant. All is ready; nothing is wanting but a sign from your august head to annihilate this pygmy, who has attempted to assault the royal ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... curls, a Satanic black mustache, and an expression of Byronic melancholy. The melancholy, he explained to Samson, sprang from the necessity of commercializing his divine gift. His companions were various, numbering among them a group of those pygmy celebrities of whom one has never heard until by chance he meets them, and of whom their ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... opposite him, passed baboonish behaviour; so much so, that Skepsey civilly intervened; subsequently inviting him to leave the carriage and receive a lesson at the station they were nearing. Upon his promising faithfully, that it should be a true and telling lesson, the navvy requested this pygmy spark to flick his cheek, merely to show he meant war in due sincerity; and he as faithfully, all honour, promising not to let it bring about a breakage of the laws of the Company, Skepsey promptly did the deed. So ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... appeared to be geometrically regular in design. The air was noisy with the cries of men, and a rhythmic thudding, through which came the rattle of winches and the hiss of steam. Over the whole vast structure swarmed an army of human ants, feeble pygmy figures that crept slowly here and there, regardless ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... he said, 'with so many things to learn. Ethnologically I am certain Africans are of common stock. The negro is a negro wherever you find him. From Kaffir to Bushman and pygmy they are all Hamites. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... dear Alan—for I will never relinquish the hope that what I am writing may one day reach your hands—has not forsaken me, even in my confinement, and the extensive though unimportant details into which I have been hurried, renders it necessary that I commence another sheet. Fortunately, my pygmy characters comprehend a great many words within a small space ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... Nilotic negro). Arabs from Zanzibar have settled in the country, but not, as far as is known, earlier than the beginning of the 19th century. As the present writer takes the general term "Negro" to include equally the Bantu, Hottentot, Bushman and Congo Pygmy, this designation will cover all the natives of British Central Africa. The Bantu races, however, exhibit in some parts signs of Hottentot or Bushman intermixture, and there are legends in some mountain districts, especially Mount Mlanje, of the former existence of unmixed Bushman tribes, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... the government of Australia. New Guinea has all the romance and lure of unexplored regions. It is a country of nature's wonders, a treasure-chest with the lid yet to be raised by some intrepid discoverer. There are tree-climbing fish, and pygmy men, mountains higher and rivers greater than any yet discovered. To the north of Australia's slice of this wonderland the Kaiser was squeezing a hunk of the same island in his ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett



Words linked to "Pygmy" :   pigmy, pygmy sperm whale, pygmy cypress



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