Dwarf

How to spell dwarf

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dwarf

What does dwarf mean?

1. nounA small mythical being of folklore, or a person, animal, or plant much smaller than usual.
2. verbTo make something seem small by comparison, usually by being far larger.

Dwarf in a sentence

• noun

  The fairy tale featured a bearded dwarf who guarded the mountain treasure.

• verb

  The new office tower will dwarf every other building on the street.

• noun

  The garden centre sold a dwarf apple tree suited to a small patio.

• verb

  The company's profits this year dwarf those of its nearest rival.

Where does dwarf come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Dwarf descends directly from the Old English dweorg (also spelled dweorh), the word for a small, often magical being of Germanic legend who lived underground and worked metal. It is a native Germanic word, with close cousins in Old Norse dvergr, Old High German twerg, and modern German Zwerg, all pointing back to a shared prehistoric Germanic root for these mythical creatures. The original guttural sound, the throaty consonant once written with that final 'g' or 'h', is exactly why English ended up with the awkward 'rf' cluster after smoothing the older pronunciation down. Over the centuries the word broadened from purely mythological creatures to describe anything unusually small, including stunted plants and, by the 1800s, small stars in astronomy. From the noun came a verb sense, to dwarf, meaning to make something else look tiny by towering over it. The plural has long wavered between 'dwarfs' and 'dwarves', the latter popularised in modern fantasy writing, but the singular spelling has stayed steady.

How the word is built

• dwarf (single Old English root dweorg, a small mythical being); no prefix or suffix