Word.ws English Dictionary

a mite

/ə ˈmaɪt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Canada[ə ˈmʌɪt]

a mite adverb: to a small extent; in a small amount; rather.

Adverb

a mite (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To a small extent; in a small amount; rather.
    • "I hope Mary has been the best of girls?" / "The bestest little girl, Sir—a mite too lively, perhaps, especially when she hears you're coming to see her,[…].["][1870], [Frederick William Robinson], “The Young Guardian”, in Owen:—A Waif (Select Library of Fiction), new edition, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book III (Battle-ground), page 117
    • "Silas, now," Esther Whitley had said, "would be a good one for you, Hannah. He's a mite on the old side, but he's steady, an' he's been wed before. He knows the ways of a woman better'n some."1956, Janice Holt Giles, chapter 8, in Hannah Fowler, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC; republished Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1992, →ISBN, page 69
    Antonyms:
    a lot

Examples of a mite in a sentence

  • Those trousers are a mite too big, but you'll soon grow into them.1959, Frances Cavanah, Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance, Chicago, Ill.: Rand McNally, →OCLC; Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance (ReadHowYouWant...
  • Given that the Prince of Denmark is himself legendary for vacillation and inaction, this always seemed a mite cheeky to me.2018 November 29, Brian Taylor, “Brexit and sellers of fish”, in BBC News, archived from the original on 26 Jun 2019:
  • In those circumstances, you’d have thought someone who had just blown $36bn of his company’s money in the pursuit of a personal obsession would have been a mite apologetic, wouldn’t you?2023 May 13, John Naughton, “A moment’s silence, please, for the death of Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse”, in The Observer, →ISSN:

Synonyms of a mite

19 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

Origin of a mite

From a + mite (“minute arachnid of the order Acarina; anything very small, a minute object, a very little quantity or particle”).

Words that rhyme with a mite

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about a mite

What does a mite mean?
A mite means to a small extent; in a small amount; rather.
How do you use a mite in a sentence?
Those trousers are a mite too big, but you'll soon grow into them.
What part of speech is a mite?
A mite is an adverb.
How do you pronounce a mite?
A mite is pronounced /ə ˈmaɪt/ (UK).

Words near a mite in the dictionary

  1. a mind is a terrible thing to waste
  2. A minor
  3. A minus
  4. A minuses
  5. a miss is as good as a mile
  6. a mite
  7. a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips
  8. A negative
  9. a new broom sweeps clean
  10. a new broom sweeps clean, but an old broom knows all the corners
  11. a new broom sweeps clean, but an old broom knows the corners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: a mite (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-a mite.wav.

Cite this entry: “a mite.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/a_mite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.