Meaning

9 senses
  1. The smallest animal of a litter.

    Zwerg, Kümmerling, Kümmerer

    после́дышposlédyš

  2. (broadly)The smallest child in the family.

    the runt of the family

  3. Undersized or stunted plant, animal or person.

    Zwerg, Winzling, Kümmerling

    недоро́стокnedoróstok, короты́шкаkorotýška, ка́рликkárlik

  4. (slang)An uninfluential or unimportant person; a nobody.

  5. An Ethernet packet that does not meet the medium's minimum packet size of 64 bytes.

  6. A single word (or portion of a hyphenated word) that appears as the last line of a paragraph.

  7. A breed of pigeon related to the carrier pigeon.

  8. A bow.

  9. (UK, dialectal, obsolete)A hardened stem or stalk of a plant.

More definitions
  • disparaging terms for small people

Examples

10 sentences
  1. This puppy was the runt of the litter.

  2. By the time we got there, there was only one puppy left, so we ended up getting the runt of the litter.

    deAls wir eintrafen, war nur noch ein Welpe da. Wir haben also den gekriegt, der am Ende als schwächster noch übrig war. — Waldelfe

  3. She was the runt of the litter.

    CC0 · Tatoeba · shekitten · C2Open on TatoebaReport a problem
  4. He was the runt of the litter.

    CC0 · Tatoeba · shekitten · C2Open on TatoebaReport a problem
  5. Tom was always the runt of the group, so everyone picked on him.

    CC BY 2.0 FR · Tatoeba · DJ_Saidez · C2Open on TatoebaReport a problem

Translations

6 languages
Русский
By meaning 2
the smallest or the weakest animal of a litter or a pack:
undersized or stunted plant, animal or person:
Deutsch
By meaning 2
the smallest or the weakest animal of a litter or a pack:
undersized or stunted plant, animal or person:

Origin

The OED classifies this word as "of obscure origin". Some see a connection to Middle Dutch

The OED classifies this word as "of obscure origin". Some see a connection to Middle Dutch runt (“ox”), but the OED considers this to be unlikely. Possibly connected to Icelandic hrotti meaning "brute".

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: runts
Singularrunt
Pluralrunts

regular

Synonyms

4 synonyms
Close in meaning

Word family

7 related words

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
runt — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto