Both Uses of
diminutive
in
Queen of Babble
- Having met Luke's father, I had built up a picture in my head of the kind of woman he would marry—diminutive, dark, and soft-spoken, to go with his dreamy absentmindedness.†
*diminutive = very small
- There are three women standing in the foyer—not including Shari, Dominique, and Agnès—and none of them is dark or diminutive.†
Definitions:
-
(1)
(diminutive) very small
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
More rarely, diminutive can reference a noun modified by as suffix (such as -let, -ette) to indicate smallness such as booklet, piglet, towelette, or cigarette.