Meaning & use
pigmy
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Meanings
adjectivebefore a nounbiologyrare
Very small for its kind, used mainly in the names of certain animals, such as the pigmy shrew or pigmy owl.
Grammar: Comes before a noun; most dictionaries now prefer the spelling pygmy: a pygmy hippo.
Patterns
- a pigmy species
- the pigmy version of something
The naturalist described a pigmy owl no bigger than a sparrow.
A pigmy hippopotamus lives in the forests of West Africa.
The zoo's smallest resident is a pigmy marmoset.
nouncountableoffensiveold-fashioned
An outdated and often offensive word for a member of certain short-statured peoples of Central Africa and Southeast Asia.
Grammar: Avoid it for people: use the name of the specific community, or a respectful term like Mbuti.
Older travel books use the word pigmy, which readers now find insulting.
A museum label that called the Mbuti people pigmies was rewritten to use their own name.
Writers today avoid pigmy and name the community instead.
Word forms
| plural | pigmies |
|---|
Common combinations
- pigmy owl
- A pigmy owl called softly from the pine.
- pigmy shrew
- The pigmy shrew is among the smallest mammals.
- pigmy marmoset
- The pigmy marmoset clung to the branch.
- pigmy goat
- A pigmy goat grazed beside the fence.
- pigmy hippo
- A pigmy hippo is much smaller than its famous cousin.
Synonyms and how they differ
- dwarf
- Dwarf is used for animals and plants that are smaller than normal, and is also found in animal names, but can offend if applied to people.
- miniature
- Miniature suggests a tiny but exact copy, not just a small natural variety.
- tiny
- Tiny is an ordinary, flexible word for anything very small, and is not used in species names.
- pygmy
- Pygmy is the standard spelling of the same word, and the one that scientific and standard sources prefer.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: pigmy or pygmy? pigmy or pig?
pigmy vs pygmy
Pygmy is the preferred spelling in current English and in animal names. Pigmy is an older variant that you will mostly see in older texts.
pigmy vs pig
The pig- at the start has nothing to do with pigs. The word comes from Greek for a measure of length, the distance from elbow to knuckle.
Practice
A zoo sign lists a very small hippo species. Which spelling would a current reference book most likely use?
Choose one answer.
Pygmy is the standard modern spelling. Pigmy is an older variant, and the other options are not accepted spellings.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “pigmy”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.