Definitions

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  • noun Plural form of pygmy.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Another shareholder, John Harrington, just said, to light applause, "comparing Yahoo to moral pygmies is unfair to pygmies."

    Yahoo's shareholder meeting is underway 2008

  • (Memoires de l’Acad.tom. vii.p. 321, &c.)] 130 The fable of the pygmies is as old as Homer, (Iliad. iii.

    The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206

  • This thrice-married and admitted adulterer who now proclaims himself as paragon of virtue and the rest of the GOP field as a pack of pygmies is just dying to enter the race so he can vanquish the last vestiges of the Clinton era, a task he failed at miserably in his last attempt in 1998 when, among other things, he tripped over his own self-righteousness, lost House seats, and provoked the raging ire of his own House leadership to the point that they not only forced him out of power as Speaker of the House, they ran him out of Congress.

    David Brooks Transformed 2007

  • “as some children always remain pygmies, whose infant limbs have been too closely confined, thus our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we admire in the ancients; who, living under a popular government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted.”

    The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206

  • In the forested interior most people are from the BaAka, BaKa, BaKola, and some smaller groups of traditional forest peoples, usually referred to as pygmies; there are also Bantu cultivators who associate closely with them.

    Northwestern Congolian lowland forests 2008

  • The pygmies were a nation of dwarfs always at war with the cranes of Scythia.

    Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 Ebenezer Cobham Brewer 1853

  • The indigenous communities, sometimes called pygmies, often lack access to basic social services.

    AllAfrica News: Latest 2009

  • I am inclined to the supposition that the obvious outward signs, the round head, bombous forehead, furry skin, and diminutive size of the pygmies are the outcome of an inward physiological condition peculiar to them, which has enabled them to resist disease or to eat certain kinds of food, or possibly to develop great mental acuteness, and so has led to the establishment of these peculiar small people as a race, without their smallness itself having anything to do with their selection and preservation.

    More Science From an Easy Chair 1888

  • Armand J. Matherne Jr. Kenner, LA. Anna Quindlen sees Hillary Rodham Clinton as a giant -- too intelligent, eloquent and well positioned to serve with the "pygmies" and "retail politicians" in the U.S.

    Sizing Up The Candidate 2008

  • Why is Newt Gingrich comparing the Republican presidential field to "pygmies" and trained seals?

    Archive 2007-07-01 News from Mad Plato 2007

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