Word.ws English Dictionary

hop-o'-my-thumb

hop-o'-my-thumb noun: a very small person or creature.

Noun

hop-o'-my-thumb (plural hop-o'-my-thumbs)

  1. (colloquial, dated) A very small person or creature.
    • As to changing them for a pack of your little hop-o'-my-thumbs, no bigger than the one you lent me t'other night — ! suppose I should ask you to let me have the mare you rode to cover o'Thursday — and a clever mare she is, […] .1830, Uncredited (John Poole), The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part 1: Original Papers, page 81
    • "In the first place,” answered Hobbleday, somewhat tartly, “I suppose our Daubson, who painted the famous grenadier in Yawkins's skittle-ground, knew very well what he was about: he wasn't going to paint hop-o'-my-thumbs that might be mistaken for drummer-boys.[…]"1837, “Opening of the Theatre-Royal, Little Pedlington”, in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, page 422

Forms of hop-o'-my-thumb

pluralhop-o'-my-thumbs

Origin of hop-o'-my-thumb

From the idea that such a person could hop over somebody's thumb; in common use in the 16th century.

Questions about hop-o'-my-thumb

What does hop-o'-my-thumb mean?
Hop-o'-my-thumb means a very small person or creature.
What part of speech is hop-o'-my-thumb?
Hop-o'-my-thumb is a noun.
What is the plural of hop-o'-my-thumb?
The plural of hop-o'-my-thumb is hop-o'-my-thumbs.

Words near hop-o'-my-thumb in the dictionary

  1. hop, skip and jump
  2. hop, skip, and a jump
  3. hop, skip, and jump
  4. hop, step and jump
  5. hop-forward
  6. hop-o'-my-thumb
  7. hop-o'-my-thumbs
  8. hop-on hop-off
  9. Hop-tu-naa
  10. hopak
  11. hopaks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hop-o'-my-thumb (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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Cite this entry: “hop-o'-my-thumb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hop-o%27-my-thumb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.