How to use diminutive in a sentence
40 example sentences · adjective, noun
Diminutive means very small. Example: “Booklet, the diminutive of book, means ‘small book’.”
Examples of diminutive by meaning
adjectiveVery small.
- Washington ("Oh, la, call me Martha, Boys") is a diminutive woman with a cheerful rather than happy air, who seems to bustle even when standing still..1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 229
- Roman Sharonov rose unchallenged to head a corner wide, while diminutive winger Gokdeniz Karadeniz ghosted in with a diving header from the edge of the six-yard box that was acrobatically kept out by Gomes.2011 October 20, Jamie Lillywhite, “Tottenham 1 - 0 Rubin Kazan”, in BBC Sport
nounA word form expressing smallness, youth, unimportance, or endearment.
- Booklet, the diminutive of book, means ‘small book’.
- But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive.1908, G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
- When we come to occupative names, we are again confronted by crowds of diminutives.1916, Ernest Weekley, Surnames, page 287
More sentences with diminutive
- Mutated contractions often form diminutive and pejorative terms, such as "Newfie" and "fundie".From the entry mutated contraction
- I always use the diminutive forms like that simply because "womanmoding" is REALLY awkward to say.2023 April 13, @lampjaded, Twitter (post), archived from the original on 18 May 2026. From the entry womanmode
- Her diminutive Kardashianesque body was a spectacle, no less than Damiens’ drawing and quartering in Paris.2020 February 8, Joseph Brean, “The Crazy Case of Chair Girl: Examining a New Morality of Punishment”, in National Post, volume 22, number…. From the entry Kardashianesque
- A pocket-size Venus, with the longest stems he'd ever seen on someone so dang diminutive.2008, Lori Wilde, Rhonda Nelson, Cara Summers, August Harlequin Blaze. From the entry stem
- She hadn't realized that 'Caro' was a diminutive of Caroline until she met Jonathan.[2004, Kate Atkinson, Case Histories, →ISBN, pages 96–97. From the entry Caro
- Bean, the diminutive, awkward, gravitationally challenged, accident-prone incarnation served up by Rowan Atkinson.2003 July 18, Leonard Klady, “MCM Review: Johnny English”, in Movie City News, retrieved 29 Aug 2010. From the entry gravitationally challenged
- For his soft-heartedness, his forgiving and undemanding nature, the governor was called by the diminutive "Inzushko.1999, Юрий Дружников, Prisoner of Russia: Alexander Pushkin and the Political Uses of Nationalism, →ISBN, page 79. From the entry soft-heartedness
- “Because Jock is not a name, but a diminutive, as everybody knows well.1975, Robertson Davies, World of Wonders, →ISBN, page 736. From the entry Ian
- "Because Jock is not a name, but a diminutive, as everybody knows well.1975, Robertson Davies, World of Wonders, →ISBN, page 736. From the entry jock
- This diminutive bilingual glossarium seems to anticipate Bar Bahlûl’s Lexicon syriacum!1971, Irfan Shahîd, The Martyrs of Najrân: New Documents, Société des Bollandistes, page 36. From the entry glossarium
- Heraldic writers give the fillet as a diminutive of the chief.1903, Day Otis Kellogg, Thomas Spencer Baynes, The Encyclopædia Britannica: A-ZYM, page 694. From the entry per chief
- Nigerpeton is a temnospondyl, more closely related to modern amphibians than to amniotes, but far bigger than today's diminutive amphibians.2022, Thomas Halliday, Otherlands, Penguin, published 2023, page 178. From the entry temnospondyl
- The Kanapoi Sivatherium has two pairs of ossicones, above the eye and between the ears, and neither is diminutive.2022, Thomas Halliday, Otherworlds, Penguin, published 2023, page 27. From the entry ossicone
- Moreover, diminutives, augmentatives, pejoratives and amelioratives have always been analysed as independent categories, neglecting the possible interrelations among them.2015, Nicola Grandi, Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, page 4. From the entry ameliorative
- Affective expressions and diminutives directly enhance the persuasive function.2013, Kazimierz Sikora, Barbara Żebrowska, “Traditional Polish lullabies”, in Liisi Laineste, Dorota Brzozowska, Władysław Chłopicki…. From the entry affectonym
- These elementals are depicted as gnomes, salamanders, diminutive faeries known as sylphs, and merfolk, known as undines, respectively.2007, Christopher Penczak, Ascension Magick: Ritual, Myth and Healing for the New Aeon, page 413. From the entry gnome
- In Old Ukrainian this became Федор (Fedor), which in turn became Федір (Fedir), with the diminutive Федько (Fedko).2007, John D. Pihach, “Names” (chapter 3, pages 21–42), in Ukrainian Genealogy: A Beginner’s Guide (paperback), Edmonton · Toronto…. From the entry Pihach
- Florence Mars, a diminutive woman barely five feet tall, seemed an unlikely candidate for the defiant role she assumed.2006 April 29, Nadine Brozan, “Florence L[atimer] Mars, 83, Who Was Spurned for Rights Work, Dies”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry mars
- Labs intrinsically love kids, and they can easily learn how to behave properly around those noisey and diminutive humans.2001, Audrey Pavia, “Personality Match”, in The Labrador Retriever Handbook, Hauppauge, N.Y.: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., →ISBN…. From the entry noisey
- I think what we should do is ban diminutives.1997 February 25, Frank Raymond Michaels, “The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name”, in misc.writing (Usenet), archived from the original…. From the entry presidentrix
- Before I know it, my time with Santa is over, and the diminutive, green, elfette lady is lifting me down off Santa's expansive knees.2014, Revolving Doors: The True Account of the Full Spectrum of Fostering Abuses, page 170. From the entry elfette
- “This is way worse than we thought,” I whispered to Benjamin as we sat on a back bench in the diminutive courtroom.2010, Jeff Deck, Benjamin D. Herson, The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, →ISBN. From the entry backbench
- For Alka-Selzer, hundreds of people were audtioned in a nationwide talent search for the voice of Speedy, the brand's diminutive, animated spokescritter.2009, Lawrence R. Samuel, Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream, page 128. From the entry spokescritter
- Finally, besides projecting a diminutive view of Taiwan as a regional entity, sinocentrism was overtly dismissive in its attitudes towards the native population.2004, Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, “Localist Position as a Product of Social Opposition”, in Literary Culture in Taiwan: Martial Law to Market…. From the entry sinocentrism
- The boot is now on the other foot, and it is Gulliver who is exposed as diminutive of stature and understanding alike.2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.9, at p.151. From the entry Brobdingnag
- Kroeber’s emphasis on the small scale of indigenous California social organizations led him to attach the diminutive "-let" to the anthropologically normative term "tribe".1994, Leventhal et. al., Back from Extinction, "The Ohlone: Past and Present Native Americans of the San Francisco Bay Region." Ballena…. From the entry tribelet
- When her little friends asked her what her name was, her father replied that it was Conchita - his diminutive for Maria de la Concepción.1988, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, Picasso, Creator and Destroyer, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 240. From the entry maya
- It is the diminutive of John.1975, Robertson Davies, World of Wonders, →ISBN, page 736. From the entry Ian
- "Tell Sannah to bring some coffee," said the young woman to a diminutive Kaffir boy, who stood gorming at us with round black eyes.1901, New Outlook, volume 67, page 408. From the entry gorm
- The chased lozenges have pairs of confronting green triangles set tip-to-tip, and with squares and diminutive triangles, all in purple and green porphyry, in the white marble interspaces.2019, Warwick Rodwell, David S. Neal, The Cosmatesque Mosaics of Westminster Abbey, page 234. From the entry chased
- Now he spends his time off from work hanging out with his diminutive best friend Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), the casual-dress princess hero of racing game Sugar Rush.2018 November 14, Jesse Hassenger, “Disney Goes Viral with an Ambitious, Overstuffed Wreck-It Ralph Sequel”, in The A.V. Club, archived…. From the entry working stiff
- The main point in the diminutive and iminutive system is, however, not only that elements of two dialectally different subsystems of German have fused in the German component.2008, Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language. From the entry dialectically
- It would be hard to exaggerate the ubiquity of the diminutive (-ito, -ita) in Latin American Spanish, which originates from the extreme reverence and indulgence accorded to the young.2004, Martin Amis, The Guardian, reprinted in The Rub of Time (NY: Knopf, 2018), p. 228. From the entry ubiquity
- Wielding the simulacra of phallocratic corporate power, pop artists (like the diminutive, neuterlike Wizard of Oz) symbolically pursued their only hope of securing some of that male power themselves.2004, Martha Rosler, Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975-2001, page 95. From the entry neuterlike
- She thus gave herself a kind of superpresence, allowing us to see that the source of all the explosive energy we had witnessed onstage was her diminutive frame.1988 March 4, Justin Hayford, “Ambiguous Gestures”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry superpresence
Meaning of diminutive
- adjective Very small.
- adjective Serving to diminish.
- adjective Of or pertaining to, or creating a word form expressing smallness, youth, unimportance, or endearment.
Questions about diminutive in a sentence
- How do you use diminutive in a sentence?
- Diminutive is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Booklet, the diminutive of book, means ‘small book’.”
- What is a short sentence with diminutive?
- “It is the diminutive of John.”
- What does diminutive mean?
- Diminutive means very small.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: diminutive (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use diminutive in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/diminutive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
