diminutive

A word form or suffix that indicates smallness.

See also:

• Affix
• Baby Talk
• Derivation
• Hypocorism

Etymology:

Examples and Observations:

• A booklet, is a small book; a circlet, a small circle; a duckling, a young duck; a hillock a small hill; a novelette, a short novel; a wavelet, a ripple or small wave; a rivulet, a small brook or stream; a gosling, a young goose; a coronet, a small crown; an eyelet, a small hole; a droplet, a tiny drop.



• "English usually forms diminutives by suffixing -y or -ie, often to a reduced form of the source word, as in hanky for handkerchief, doggie for dog and Tommie for Thomas. But we also use -ette, as in statuette and kitchenette."
  (R.L. Trask, Dictionary of English Grammar. Penguin, 2000)



• "[I]n English, productive diminutive derivation hardly exists at all, despite the existence of isolated baby forms such as handies, doggie or birdie (one can say girlie but not *mannie, auntie but not *unclie, horsie but not *goatie, and so on."
  (Anna Wierzbicka, Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human Interaction. Walter de Gruyter, 1991)



• "A charming trick almost every language has is the 'shrinking' of someone or something you like by the use of diminutives. The diminutive of Charles is Charlie. The diminutive of William is Billy. The diminutive of star is starlet. The diminutive of pig is piglet. The Olympics of diminutives is won hands-down by the Italians, who have literally dozens of different forms of the diminutive, each conveying its own special nuance of feeling for the noun undergoing the shrinking."
  (Barry Farber, How to Learn Any Language. Citadel, 1991)



• "The food is so good because the ingredients are excellent, like the breads that are made especially for 'ino at Blue Ribbon Bakery down the block. But 'ino, a word ending that is an all-purpose Italian diminutive, also offers a European-style warmth."
  (Eric Asimov, "An Italian Sandwich Shop That Takes the Diminutive." The New York Times, February 10, 1999)



• "Diminutives are titles of endearment. Dr. Johnson calling Goldsmith 'Goldy' did equal honor to both."
  (William Hazlitt, "On Nicknames")



• "'Fanny' is a patronizing diminutive. It makes the author [Frances Burney] sound the harmless, childish, priggish girl-woman that many critics want her to be--as if the heroine of Mansfield Park has set up as novelist. Let her have an adult full name."
  (Margaret Anne Doody, Frances Burney: The Life in the Works. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1988)