small
/smɔːl
/- Its high performance in a small case size also means that the costs can be reduced by using fewer or smaller capacitors.
- The precision of variance components is reduced when sample size is small.
- Staff revealed that four ovens were situated on the ground floor, two electric and two gas, each the same size as a small car.
Synonyms
- Both areas were receiving small amounts of money over the years but little progress was being made.
- Prior to the euro, some countries used notes for quite small amounts of money.
- It is making me ridiculously happy, so it must have been worth the small amount of money I spent.
- As a small boy Johnnie grew up to know and love those lovely hills that surrounded his home in Castlerock.
- Neither did they know of the sacrifices made by small boy, grown beyond his years, so that he could keep them all safe.
- The gland is very small in babies and grows at the time of puberty in response to testosterone secreted by the testicles.
- The flowers seem small and insignificant during the day but at twilight they glow in the fading light and look beautiful.
- He was small and insignificant but had a firearm trained on my navel.
- The peaks of Glen Shiel loomed over and made me feel deliciously small and insignificant.
Synonyms
- The study showed that small business owners and managers felt they came up with seven good ideas a month.
- It is appealing for other small business owners to pay for booklets for their local school.
- He said the experience gave him a new appreciation for small business owners.
Synonyms
- Most retail philistines won't quite see what all the fuss is about; smalls are smalls, they murmur, no matter where they are sold.
- If I could now ask you to drop your trousers and smalls…
- Nevertheless, I managed to fill up the car out by the Harbour View station when I drove out there in the evening to look upon two skin rashes and earn a smalls.
- An old man came begging at the gate, he offered to wash the cars for a smalls.
- It started out small and kept on expanding until it became one of the largest universities in the region.
- The US may grumble that Europe talks big and acts small, but that is pretty much what Washington wants.
Phrases
feel (or look) small
in a small way
it is (or what) a small world
no small ——
small is beautiful
the small of the back
small potatoes
small profits and quick returns
the small screen
small wonder
Origin
Old English smæl, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch smal and German schmal.
A word recorded since around ad 700. In Old English it could refer to something slender or narrow as well as something more generally of less than usual size. From the 16th century small beer was a term for weaker beer, the sort that people drank for breakfast when water supplies were unsafe. In Macbeth Iago dismisses women as fit only to ‘chronicle small beer’, and from this sort of use developed the sense of something insignificant. Small potatoes started out as a phrase in American English, usually in the fuller form small potatoes and few in the hill—an expression used by Davy Crockett in 1836. The phrase small is beautiful, suggesting that something small-scale is better than a large-scale equivalent, comes from the title of a book by E. F. Schumacher, published in 1973. It is perhaps best known as a slogan adopted by environmentalists.