Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Being below the average in size or magnitude.
- adj. Limited in importance or significance; trivial: a small matter.
- adj. Limited in degree or scope: small farm operations.
- adj. Lacking position, influence, or status; minor: "A crowd of small writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison” ( Thomas Macaulay).
- adj. Unpretentious; modest: made a small living; helped the cause in my own small way.
- adj. Not fully grown; very young.
- adj. Narrow in outlook; petty: a small mind.
- adj. Having been belittled; humiliated: Their comments made me feel small.
- adj. Diluted; weak. Used of alcoholic beverages.
- adj. Lacking force or volume: a small voice.
- adv. In small pieces: Cut the meat up small.
- adv. Without loudness or forcefulness; softly.
- adv. In a small manner.
- n. A part that is smaller or narrower than the rest: the small of the back.
- n. Small things considered as a group.
- n. Chiefly British Small items of clothing.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Slender; thin; narrow.
- Little in size; not great or large; of less than average or ordinary dimensions; diminutive.
- Little or inferior in degree, quantity, amount, duration, number, value, etc.; short (in time or extent); narrow, etc.
- Low, as applied to station, social position, etc.
- Being of little moment, weight, or importance; trivial; insignificant; petty; trifling: as, it is a small matter or thing; a small subject.
- Of little genius, ability, or force of character; petty; insignificant.
- Containing little of the principal quality, or little strength; weak: as, small beer.
- Thin: applied to tones or to the voice. Fine; of a clear and high sound; treble.
- Gentle; soft; faint; not loud.
- Characterized by littleness of mind or character; evincing little worth; narrow-minded; sordid; selfish; ungenerous; mean; base; unworthy.
- Having little property; carrying on a business on a small scale.
- Meager in quantity, as a body of water: an anglers' epithet: as, the water is too small to use the fly.
- Noting the condition of the cutting edge of a saw as condensed by hammering: same as tight.
- Unostentatiously; without pretension.
- Synonyms Smaller, Fewer (see less), tiny, puny, stunted, Lilliputian, minute.
- Inconsiderable, unimportant, slender, scanty, moderate, paltry, slight, feeble.
- Shallow. See pettiness.
- Illiberal, stingy, scrimping.
- n. A small thing or quantity; also, the small or slender part of a thing: as, the small of the leg or of the back; specifically, the smallest part of the trunk of a whale; the tapering part toward, near, or at the base of the flukes.
- n. plural Same as small-clothes.
- n. plural The “little go,” or previous examination: as, to be plucked for smalls.
- n. plural In coal-mining, same as small coal (see above).
- n. plural In metal-mining, ore mixed with gangue in particles of small size: a term used with various shades of meaning in certain districts of England.
- To make little or less; lessen.
- In a small quantity or degree; little.
- Low; in low tones; gently; timidly; also, in a shrill or high key.
Wiktionary
- adj. Not large or big; insignificant; few in numbers or size.
- adj. figuratively Young, as a child.
- adj. writing, incomparable Minuscule or lowercase, referring to written letters.
- adv. this sense?) In a small fashion.
- adv. In or into small pieces.
- adv. obsolete To a small extent.
- n. Any part of something that is smaller or slimmer than the rest, now usually with anatomical reference to the back.
- n. UK, in the plural Underclothes.
- v. obsolete, transitive To make little or less.
- v. intransitive To become small; to dwindle.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Having little size, compared with other things of the same kind; little in quantity or degree; diminutive; not large or extended in dimension; not great; not much; inconsiderable.
- adj. Being of slight consequence; feeble in influence or importance; unimportant; trivial; insignificant.
- adj. Envincing little worth or ability; not large-minded; -- sometimes, in reproach, paltry; mean.
- adj. Not prolonged in duration; not extended in time; short.
- adj. Weak; slender; fine; gentle; soft; not loud.
- adv. obsolete In or to small extent, quantity, or degree; little; slightly.
- adv. Obs. or Humorous Not loudly; faintly; timidly.
- n. The small or slender part of a thing.
- n. colloq. Smallclothes.
- n. Same as Little go. See under Little, a.
- v. obsolete To make little or less.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the slender part of the back
- adj. slight or limited; especially in degree or intensity or scope
- adj. (of children and animals) young, immature
- adj. have fine or very small constituent particles
- adj. lowercase.
- adv. on a small scale
- adj. limited or below average in number or quantity or magnitude or extent
- adj. made to seem smaller or less (especially in worth)
- adj. not large but sufficient in size or amount
- adj. (of a voice) faint
- adj. low or inferior in station or quality
- adj. limited in size or scope
- n. a garment size for a small person
Etymologies
- From Middle English smal, from Old English smæl ("small, narrow, slender"), from Proto-Germanic *smalaz (“small”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mal-, *(s)mel- (“small, mean, malicious”). Cognate with Scots smal; sma ("small"); West Frisian smel ("narrow"); Dutch smal ("narrow"); German schmal ("narrow, small"); Danish, Norwegian, Swedish små ("small"); Latin malus ("bad"); Russian малый (mályj, "small"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English smal, from Old English smæl. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“ Happy memories include, the small small bed that Rick had when we met . it was small . it was great ., the lack of hangers, the big screen TV that took my mind off of the past a lot of nights, the hamburgers and cheese and crazy nights of eating dinner at midnight . it was like being in college never alone and much activity.”
“To form them use two very small coffeespoons or eggspoons, as the quenelles should not be larger than _small_ olives; butter the spoons slightly, and when formed drop each for one or two minutes into boiling pale-colored stock.”
“_Caution_: If the patient is an infant or small child, blow _small puffs_ of air into him about 20 times a minute.”
In Time of Emergency A Citizen's Handbook on Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968)
“Children should be fed carefully, and but a small quantity at a time, being particular both for adults and children to use as little _liquid_ as possible; drink water in _small_ quantities, not very cold.”
“A small tree recognized by its _small round reddish brown buds_ and”
“If, therefore, I wish to say the small fires in the houseand I can do this in one wordI must form the word fire-in-the-house, to which elements corresponding to small, our plural, and the are appended.”
“First he gathered a few small twigs and made a _very small_ fire.”
Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865
“The covers were removed -- two small soles (much _too small_ for three people), and a dish of potatoes.”
“He prefers the term "small unmanned aircraft" to describe the two units his department is buying.”
“But the Brewers don't particularly like the term "small market," and don't use it as a crutch.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘small’.
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Impressionism
Words that describe the art of the impressionist era.
seascapes, landscapes, modern, impression, impressionist, contemporary, flicker, sensation, modernity, perceived, perceiving, momentary and 142 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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POL - campaign tokenisms
Positive words and vague promises. THE words and expressions to use when you want to win over the masses or just don't know what to say.
"CAPITAL" stands for the administrative capital...deserve, deserve better, destiny, determination, determine, determine the wil..., dialogue, differentiation, difficult question, disappointments, diverse, diversity and 751 more...
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Adjectives
sagacious, average, angry, mad, crazy, giant, ugly, pretty, happy, sad, lonely, solitary and 119 more...
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Kitten Is:
Mere days ago, I found a five-week-old kitten abandoned in the median of the Avenue we live on. She was in terrible shape, but is doing great now thanks to love and dedication.
The fo...small, hyper, bitey, silly, springy, soft, sage-eyed, tortoise shell, archy, darty, sneaky, bestriped and 27 more...
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Adjectives for XKCD936-compliant pass...
A list of 2048 common English adjectives that could be used to create plausible, memorable random phrases.
I'm going to use this list in a password generator, inspired by big, small, happy, sad, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, near, far and 19 more... -
Small stuff
Adjectives that describe small objects.
small, tiny, diminutive, little, dinky, itsy-bitsy, itty-bitty, teeny, bitsy, bitty, bantam, teensy and 23 more...
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Lexicon of Tim's
There may be 50 words for snow, but how many words are there related to Tim's
Tim's, Timmies, double double, timbit, Timbit, Timmy's, horny Tim's, steeped, Tim Card, TimmyRun, Tims Run, rrroll and 48 more...
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Some HTML is allowed
I don't remember all the cool stuff we can do--I'm hoping that eventually this could be a how-to list for those of us who have a hard time remembering much about code but still want to add goofy pi...
link, image, bold, italic, blockquote, strong, emphasis, underline, strike, deleted, embed, small
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Words grabbed from real life conversa...
If I've seen it, heard it, or marvelled at it, I'll stick it here.
cruft, ermine, redundant, shakespearean, camino, marvelous, stupendous, chagrin, shaven, sleek, smug, stillness and 325 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
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lanas's Words
serendipitous, insouciant, charming, sanguine, dear, odd, quaint, small, tremble, blush, flirt, tryst and 248 more...
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feeling words
twitterpated, loquacious, ambiguous, pensive, sluggish, anxious, adventurous, curious, abandoned, absent-minded, abrasive, abused and 653 more...
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HTML Tags
A list of all the HTML tags.
a, abbr, acronym, address, applet, area, article, aside, audio, b, base, basefont and 108 more...
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How Do You Take Your Coffee?
The things that can be done to a cuppa joe.
Kahlúa, Irish coffee, syrup shot, vanilla, hazelnut, Sanka, harmless, decaf, half-caf, quad, triple, double and 97 more...
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the hotlist
short, sweet, epic, catchy, sassy, sexy & sizzling.
( personal list, randomness )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/...zing, epic, win, fail, hot, warp, times, clip, onyx, wonky, pwn, leet and 1493 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for small.

jrome "But we should understand that for many ideas enabled by the Internet, small is the new big." -- January 3, 2008, 3:45 pm
Twitter, Firefox and Big Ideas That Are Small Companies
By Saul Hansell
NY TIMES Tags: Business Models, firefox, microblogging, Mozilla, twitter
Feb 6, 2008
angharad In my household, we refer to the pocket-pets (rodents) this way. To differentiate from our "medium", which is the cat, and the "larges", who are us. A feral house-mouse is, then, similarly small, little or, better tiny; and insects are tiny or wee. If we had a ferret, I suspect it would be smallish or not-quite-medium. I likewise suspect a standard dog would be larger or largish. Dec 15, 2006