Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of inferior size, strength, or significance; weak.
- adjective Chiefly Southern US Sickly; ill.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A bedbug: same as
punice . - Later-born; younger; junior. See
puisne , 1. - Small and weak; inferior or imperfectly developed in size or strength; feeble; petty; insignificant.
- Synonyms Little, diminutive, stunted, starveling.
- noun A young, inexperienced person; a junior; a novice.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun rare A youth; a novice.
- adjective Imperfectly developed in size or vigor; small and feeble; inferior; petty.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun obsolete A
new pupil at a school etc.; a junior student. - noun obsolete A
younger person. - noun obsolete A
beginner , anovice . - noun archaic An
inferior person; asubordinate . - adjective Of
inferior size ,strength orsignificance .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective inferior in strength or significance
- adjective (used especially of persons) of inferior size
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I'll have to shoot a deer at Thanksgiving with my 338 from stem to stern to see if I can get the bullet back, and show you guys that the big X bullets are expanding, even in puny deer.
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I'll have to shoot a deer at Thanksgiving with my 338 from stem to stern to see if I can get the bullet back, and show you guys that the big X bullets are expanding, even in puny deer.
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Jarvis Cocker: "Why do they call a puny person a weed, when weeds are tenacious plants that grow in adverse circumstances?"
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But ask them we must, for the human barbarian seeks explanations & meaning for what is inexplicable & unanswerable in the terms our puny brain can understand.
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But ask them we must, for the human barbarian seeks explanations & meaning for what is inexplicable & unanswerable in the terms our puny brain can understand.
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But ask them we must, for the human barbarian seeks explanations & meaning for what is inexplicable & unanswerable in the terms our puny brain can understand.
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But ask them we must, for the human barbarian seeks explanations & meaning for what is inexplicable & unanswerable in the terms our puny brain can understand.
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Jarvis Cocker: "Why do they call a puny person a weed, when weeds are tenacious plants that grow in adverse circumstances?"
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But ask them we must, for the human barbarian seeks explanations & meaning for what is inexplicable & unanswerable in the terms our puny brain can understand.
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David Pogue, has been that its offerings are "puny" -- a mere 60,000 e-books so far -- compared to what's available on the Kindle or other e-readers offered by competing retailers like Barnes
DailyFinance Sarah Weinman 2010
bilby commented on the word puny
"I have gone all through Brahms pretty well by now. All I can say of him is that he's a puny little dwarf with a rather narrow chest. Good Lord, if a breath from the lungs of Richard Wagner whistled about his ears, he would scarcely be able to keep his feet."
- Gustav Mahler.
October 23, 2009
hernesheir commented on the word puny
One can almost bet that Brahms penned better cello parts than Joseph Haydn did....
October 23, 2009
PossibleUnderscore commented on the word puny
heehee.
October 23, 2009