Meaning

2 senses

  1. (countable, uncountable)The property of being little, smallness.

    His littleness didn't bother him, except when he needed to get something off the top shelf.

    the property of having relatively little strength or vigor

  2. (countable, uncountable)Smallness of spirit; pettiness.

Origin

From Middle English litelnes, litelnesse, from Old English lytelnysse, lȳtelnes, equivalen

From Middle English litelnes, litelnesse, from Old English lytelnysse, lȳtelnes, equivalent to little + -ness.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: littlenesses
Singularlittleness
Plurallittlenesses

regular

Synonyms

2 synonyms
Close in meaning
  • lack of generosity in trifling matters:pettinesssmallness
  • the property of having relatively little strength or vigor:smallness
  • the property of having a relatively small size:smallness

Antonyms

1 antonyms
bigness

Word family

1 related words
Relatedlittle

Lessons for this word

1 lessons

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
littleA1liturgylivableliveA1

Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.

littleness — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto