PYGMY
What does "PYGMY" mean?
A very small individual of a kind, especially a smaller-than-usual animal or plant variety.
Meanings
- Of an unusually small variety or breed. The pygmy hippo is a fraction of the size of its river-dwelling cousin.
- A member of certain ethnic groups in equatorial Africa and elsewhere whose adults are characteristically short in stature. Anthropologists studied the forest-dwelling Pygmy communities of the Congo Basin.
- A person or thing of small importance or ability compared with others. Beside the giants of the field, his rivals looked like intellectual pygmies. figurative
Did you know?
- The word comes from a Greek body-measurement: 'pygme' was the span from elbow to knuckle, so a 'pygmaios' was someone supposedly only about a forearm tall - the same root that means 'fist'.
Word origin
From Greek 'pygmaios' meaning 'dwarfish', literally 'the length of the forearm from elbow to knuckle', from 'pygme', a measure of that distance and the word for 'fist'.
Remember it
PYGMY has no normal vowels in the middle - tiny letters for a tiny thing; the Y's stand in for the I's that didn't fit.
A little poem
Small is not lesser, only nearer the ground-
the pygmy owl still hunts what giants drowned out.
couplet
What it teaches
Scale is a comparison, not a verdict; the smallest creature in a forest is still complete.
Quick facts
What does PYGMY mean?
A very small individual of a kind, especially a smaller-than-usual animal or plant variety.
Is PYGMY a valid word?
Yes — PYGMY is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is PYGMY?
PYGMY has 5 letters and 2 syllables.
Where does PYGMY come from?
From Greek 'pygmaios' meaning 'dwarfish', literally 'the length of the forearm from elbow to knuckle', from 'pygme', a measure of that distance and the word for 'fist'.
What can PYGMY teach us?
Scale is a comparison, not a verdict; the smallest creature in a forest is still complete.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.