small

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“
The love of the great for the small is the passionate love; the upward love hesitates and is fugitive.

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Definitions (99)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (17)

  1. adjective Being below the average in size or magnitude.
  2. adjective Limited in importance or significance; trivial: a small matter.
  3. adjective Limited in degree or scope: small farm operations.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (65)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (4)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (13)

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Examples (50)

  • While it only hosts a small, two-character scene no more than three minutes in length, it is an extremely crucial set I started out with what was called for in the script, in which Stellar Cartography is characterized as a small room with some maps on one wall. —  Omni: December 1994
  • I saw his face, the two paradoxical halves of it; I was sitting on his lap, very small -- small enough again to touch his hard cheek, to polish his glowing golden eye, and feel its heat through a chamois cloth. —  F ;SF; - vol 090 issue 06 - June 1996
  • Williams said the patient fought them and they accidentally nipped her twice with clippers, drawing what he described as a small amount of blood. —  NewsObserver.com - Home
  • Raju admitted last week to faking about $1 billion in cash on Satyam's books, and vastly inflating the company's profit margins, after what he described as a small discrepancy bloomed out of control. —  NYT > Global Home
  • The engineering that went into this car to make it this small is amazing. —  Top stories from Times Online
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This word has been looked up 202 times.

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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

large ·  new ·  dark ·  entire

Used in the same contextWord Family

small:   smaller ·  smallest
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English smal, from Old English smæl.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. Formerly also smal; also dial. smale; from Middle English small, smal, smel (plural smale), from Anglo-Saxon smæl, thin, small, = Old Saxon smal = OFries. smel = Dutch smal = Middle Low German smal = Old High German Middle High German smal, German schmal, slender, = Danish Swedish smal, narrow, thin (cf. Icelandic obsolete smali, n., small cattle, goats, etc., smælingi, a small man), = Gothic (Moesogothic) smals, small; related to Icelandic smār = Danish smaa = Swedish små = Old High German smāhi, Middle High German smāhe, smǣhe, small (cf. Old High German, smāhī, smallness, German schmach, disgrace, orig. smallness, schmachten, languish, dwindle); prob. related to L. macer, lean, thin (see meager), Greek μακρός, long,μικρός, σμικρός, small (see macron, micron); cf. Old Bulgarian malŭ, small, Gr.μῆλα (for *σμῆλα?), small cattle, Old Irish mīl, a beast.
  2. from Middle English smalen; from small, adjective
  3. from Middle English smal; from small, adjective
 

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/smɔl/
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