littleness

Noun

littleness (countable and uncountable, plural littlenesses)

1. The property of being little, smallness.
   • For although the Queen had ordered a little Equipage of all things neceſſary while I was in her Service, yet my Ideas were wholly taken up with what I ſaw on every ſide of me, and winked at my own Littleneſs as People do at their own Faults.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The King and Queen Make a Progress to the Frontiers. The Author Attends Them. The Manner in which He Leaves the Country Very Particularly Related. He Returns to...
   • His littleness didn't bother him, except when he needed to get something off the top shelf.
2. Smallness of spirit; pettiness.
   • Court, city, church are all shops of smallwares;
     All having blown to sparks their noble fire,
     And drawn their sound gold ingot into wire;
     All trying by a love of littleness
     To make abridgments, and to draw to less
     Even that nothing which at first we were;1614, John Donne, To the Countess of Salisbury, lines 16–21
   • So unlike what a man should be!—None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume III, chapter 10