minnow

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“
A great many people do as much as that, and discover too late that what they have taken for a minnow is an alligator, or a tartar, or a salamander, or some evil beast that is too much for their powers.

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Definitions (17)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun Any of a large group of small freshwater fishes of the family Cyprinidae, widely used as live bait.
  2. noun Any of various other small, often silver-colored fishes.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (12)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

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Examples (50)

  • He worried that a minnow might be snapped up by some unseen predator. —  Volk
  • Clouds burn up at 1 P.M. I put on a minnow, and kill three more; I should have had lots, but for the image of the dirty hickory stick, which would 'walk the waters like a thing of life,' just ahead of my minnow. —  Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet
  • Routinely seen as a cricketing minnow, they transformed themselves into a major force during the 1990s, winning the 1996 World Cup by beating Australia in the finals. —  Cricket Photogallery from Cricketnext.com
  • "I thought I was a minnow, but now I realize I'm just plankton," said the 60-year-old New York musician. —  news | SH | http://www.heraldtribune.com
  • Shortly after taking the company public, Schar launched what must be the greatest ever minnow-swallowing-the-whale case history. —  Hardware Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha
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This word has been looked up 95 times.

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English meneu; see men-4 in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Formerly also minow, minoe, menow, etc.; also dial. minny, minnie (cf. equivalent dial. minim, minnan, mennam, mennom, apparently conformed to L. minimus, least: see minim); from Middle English menow, a minnow, apparently from Anglo-Saxon *mine, myne (plural mynas), a minnow (glossed by Middle Latin mena); possibly from the root of min, less, with Middle English term, -ow due to confusion with some other word, perhaps Old French menu, small; cf. Middle English menuse, small fish, from Old French menuise (Middle Latin menusia), small fish collectively, from Latin minutus, small: see menuse.
 

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/ˈmɪnoʊ/
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