dwarf

plural dwarfs · plural dwarves

1. human sciencesAny member of a race of beings from (especially Scandinavian and other Germanic) folklore, usually depicted as having some sort of supernatural powers and being skilled in crafting and metalworking, often as short with long beards, and sometimes as clashing with elves.

   [T]he elf king and his queen made a royal progress every noon with a splendid retinue of dwarves and sprites, […]

   1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1st US edition, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN, part 3: In the Zone, page 419

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   Nidavellir, which is sometimes called Svartalfheim, where the dwarfs (who are also known as dark elves) live beneath the mountains and build their remarkable creations.

   2017, Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 20

   Synonyms: dwarfin, dwarrow

2. offensivesometimesA person of short stature, often one whose limbs are disproportionately small in relation to the body as compared with typical adults, usually as the result of a genetic condition.

   The nurse exclaimed it when I finally arrived, a month late (a habit I have kept). That's how my parents found out that I was a little person, a dwarf, of short stature.

   2014 September 12, Cara Reedy, “My life as a little person”, in CNN, archived from the original on 17 Feb 2016

   Synonyms: elf, midget, pygmy · Antonyms: ettin, giant

3. An animal, plant or other thing much smaller than the usual of its sort.

   dwarf tree

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   dwarf honeysuckle

   Synonyms: runt

4. astronomyA dwarf star.

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   But none of those brown dwarfs were speeding along on a trajectory that would carry them out of the galaxy like “runaway” hypervelocity stars observed by astronomers in the last two decades. […] The study team said it’s likely the star was a companion to a white dwarf star, which is the remaining core of a dead star that has expelled the gases that serve as its nuclear fuel.

   2024 August 21, Ashley Strickland, “An unusual object is moving so fast it could escape the Milky Way. Scientists aren’t certain what it is”, in CNN, archived from the original on 24 Sep 2024

comparative dwarfer · superlative dwarfest

1. especiallyMiniature.

   The specimen is a very dwarf form of the plant.

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   It is possible to grow the plants as dwarf as one desires.

present singular third person dwarfs · participle present dwarfing · participle past dwarfed · past dwarfed

1. transitiveTo render (much) smaller, turn into a dwarf (version).

   Synonyms: miniaturize, shrink

2. transitiveTo make appear (much) smaller, puny, tiny; to be much larger than.

   The newly-built skyscraper dwarfs all older buildings in the downtown skyline.

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   The train bursts from Rusher Cutting Tunnel with explosive violence, the engine's exhaust soaring high into the air, but dwarfed by the mighty limestone cliffs on either side.

   1960 April, J. P. Wilson, E. N. C. Haywood, “The route through the Peak - Derby to Manchester: Part Two”, in Trains Illustrated, page 225

   In the past two years, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has located nearly 3,000 exoplanet candidates ranging from sub-Earth-sized minions to gas giants that dwarf our own Jupiter.

   2013 May-June, Kevin Heng, “Why Does Nature Form Exoplanets Easily?”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 184

3. transitiveTo make appear insignificant.

   Bach dwarfs all other composers.

   Synonyms: eclipse, overshadow, outshadow, outshine, outdo, put to shame, upstage, surpass

4. intransitiveTo become (much) smaller.

   Synonyms: shrink

5. To hinder from growing to the natural size; to make or keep small; to stunt.

   At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk - into a race of beauties that seems almost another species

   1710 July 2 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1710”, in The Spectator, number 98; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC

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   Even the most common moral ideas and affections […] would be stunted and dwarfed, if cut off from a spiritual background.

   1881, John Campbell Shairp, Aspects of Poetry

   “The morphology of the fossil teeth also suggests that this human lineage represents a dwarfed descendant of early Homo erectus that somehow got marooned on the island of Flores,” Yousuke Kaifu, from Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, said in a statement.

   2016 June 9, James Griffiths, “This is how the ‘Hobbits’ of Indonesia became so small”, in CNN, archived from the original on 11 Apr 2021

1. file formatA standardized debugging file format.

   In debug mode, a compiled binary will include debugging symbols in the DWARF debugging format.

   2019, Rahul Sharma, Vesa Kaihlavirta, Mastering Rust, 2nd edition, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 500