[pig-mee] 
noun, plural -mies, adjective | 1. | Anthropology.
|
| 2. | (lowercase ) a small or dwarfish person. |
| 3. | (lowercase) anything very small of its kind. |
| 4. | (lowercase) a person who is of small importance, or who has some quality, attribute, etc., in very small measure. |
| 5. | Classical Mythology. (in the Iliad) one of a race of dwarfs who fought battles with cranes, who preyed on them and destroyed their fields. |
| 6. | (often lowercase) of or pertaining to the Pygmies. |
| 7. | (lowercase) of very small size, capacity, power, etc. |
| Pyg·my also Pig·my (pĭg'mē) n. pl. Pyg·mies also Pig·mies
[Middle English pigmie, from Latin Pygmaeī, the Pygmies, from Greek Pugmaioi, from pugmē, cubit, fist; see peuk- in Indo-European roots.] |
A member of any ethnic group in which the average height of the adult male is less than four feet, eleven inches. There are Pygmy tribes in dense rain-forest areas of central Africa, southern India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The most widely studied Pygmies are the Mbuti of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, who pursue a nomadic hunting and gathering subsistence (see nomadism and hunting and gathering societies), but have established complex interdependent relationships with their non-Pygmy farming neighbors.
pygmy pyg·my (pĭg'mē)
n.
An individual of unusually small size.
Pygmy A member of any of various peoples, especially found in equatorial Africa and parts of southeast Asia, having an average height less than 5 feet.
