"littleness" meaning in English

See littleness in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: littlenesses [plural]
Etymology: From Middle English litelnes, litelnesse, from Old English lytelnysse, lȳtelnes, equivalent to little + -ness. Etymology templates: {{inh|en|enm|litelnes}} Middle English litelnes, {{m|enm|litelnesse}} litelnesse, {{inh|en|ang|lytelnysse}} Old English lytelnysse, {{m|ang|lȳtelnes}} lȳtelnes, {{suffix|en|little|ness}} little + -ness Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} littleness (countable and uncountable, plural littlenesses)
  1. The property of being little, smallness. Tags: countable, uncountable Translations (state of being little): parvitās [feminine] (Latin)
    Sense id: en-littleness-en-noun-S7Elo4ix Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English terms suffixed with -ness Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 50 50 Disambiguation of English terms suffixed with -ness: 46 54 Disambiguation of 'state of being little': 96 4
  2. Smallness of spirit; pettiness. Tags: countable, uncountable
    Sense id: en-littleness-en-noun-zR7mtz7X Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English terms suffixed with -ness Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 50 50 Disambiguation of English terms suffixed with -ness: 46 54

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for littleness meaning in English (3.8kB)

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      "expansion": "Middle English litelnes",
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  "etymology_text": "From Middle English litelnes, litelnesse, from Old English lytelnysse, lȳtelnes, equivalent to little + -ness.",
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      "form": "littlenesses",
      "tags": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "_dis": "50 50",
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        {
          "text": "His littleness didn't bother him, except when he needed to get something off the top shelf."
        },
        {
          "text": "1757, Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part III, Sect. 21, pp. 161-162,\nLittleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty. The humming bird both in shape and colouring yields to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness."
        }
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      "id": "en-littleness-en-noun-S7Elo4ix",
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      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "96 4",
          "code": "la",
          "lang": "Latin",
          "sense": "state of being little",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
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          "word": "parvitās"
        }
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        {
          "ref": "1614, John Donne, To the Countess of Salisbury, lines 16–21",
          "text": "Court, city, church are all shops of smallwares;\nAll having blown to sparks their noble fire,\nAnd drawn their sound gold ingot into wire;\nAll trying by a love of littleness\nTo make abridgments, and to draw to less\nEven that nothing which at first we were;",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume III, chapter 10",
          "text": "So unlike what a man should be!—None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1886, Theodore Roosevelt, chapter 11, in Thomas Hart Benton, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 239",
          "text": "Tyler […] has been called a mediocre man; but this is unwarranted flattery. He was a politician of monumental littleness.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1904, H. G. Wells, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, Chapter 1, section I",
          "text": "There is no doubt about what is not great, no race of men have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; their researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion; and what is left over is not very much.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      "glosses": [
        "Smallness of spirit; pettiness."
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        {
          "text": "His littleness didn't bother him, except when he needed to get something off the top shelf."
        },
        {
          "text": "1757, Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part III, Sect. 21, pp. 161-162,\nLittleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty. The humming bird both in shape and colouring yields to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness."
        }
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        "The property of being little, smallness."
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        {
          "ref": "1614, John Donne, To the Countess of Salisbury, lines 16–21",
          "text": "Court, city, church are all shops of smallwares;\nAll having blown to sparks their noble fire,\nAnd drawn their sound gold ingot into wire;\nAll trying by a love of littleness\nTo make abridgments, and to draw to less\nEven that nothing which at first we were;",
          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume III, chapter 10",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1886, Theodore Roosevelt, chapter 11, in Thomas Hart Benton, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 239",
          "text": "Tyler […] has been called a mediocre man; but this is unwarranted flattery. He was a politician of monumental littleness.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "1904, H. G. Wells, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, Chapter 1, section I",
          "text": "There is no doubt about what is not great, no race of men have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; their researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion; and what is left over is not very much.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
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      "glosses": [
        "Smallness of spirit; pettiness."
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "la",
      "lang": "Latin",
      "sense": "state of being little",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "parvitās"
    }
  ],
  "word": "littleness"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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