little peoplen.

1605 J. Sylvester tr. G. de S. Du Bartas Deuine Weekes & Wks. Index sig. XX9 Pigmes, little people of the North a Cubit high.

1745 G. S. Green tr. N.-F. Dupré de Saint-Maur State of Innocence i. 58/1 Pigmies;... A little people said to live on the Mountains of India or Africa.

1833 Chambers' Edinb. Jrnl. 8 June 150/1 In the year 1710, Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, celebrated a marriage of dwarfs... Some of these little people were unwilling to appear at a ceremony which..was calculated to turn them into ridicule.

1889 Harper's Young People 26 Nov. 57/1 There's a great show down at Marketville... They haven't got any dwarf or midget. That's what they call little people.

1957 Nevada State Jrnl. 4 Apr. 3/4 They decided that the formal organization name will be ‘The Little People of America’... Foreign residents who are midgets will be admitted as honorary members.

1993 Sci. Amer. Aug. 9/2 The board president of the Human Growth Foundation..thinks adult Little People do not see a need to change the height of unusually short kids.

2006 W. Safire in N.Y. Times Mag. 10 Sept. 18/1 Because of cruel folklore portraying those affected by dwarfism as ugly Rumpelstiltskins, many with that genetic abnormality prefer to be called ‘little people’ or ‘of short stature’.

1699 J. Collier Def. Short View Eng. Stage 27 Gaming & Debauchery were Scandalous to little People; But when these Vices dwelt in great Houses, they..grew Modish and Gentile.

1749 H. Fielding Tom Jones I. i. vi. 26 It is the Nature of such Persons..to insult and tyrannize over little People . View more context for this quotation

?1757 Coll. Pretty Poems 57 If our great people would be good, the little people would be better than they are; for we all copy our superiors.

1828 E. Bulwer-Lytton Pelham I. ii. 9 There was in it..no cringing to great, and no patronising condescension to little people.

1856 C. Dickens Little Dorrit (1857) i. i. 13 A poor little contraband trader, whose papers are wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for placing his boat..at the disposition of other little people whose papers are wrong.

1901 C. Morris Life on Stage xxiv. 195 I hear many tales of the insolence of stars—of their..injustice to ‘little people’ as the term goes.

1951 M. McLuhan Mech. Bride 66/1 Her allies are the little people, who..have to contend with the frustrations brought about by bureaucratic bungling.

2001 Observer 22 July i. 25/3 Archer was..sycophantic to the powerful, contemptuous of the little people.

1712 J. Addison Spectator No. 500. ¶3 I cannot forbear amusing myself with finding out a general, an admiral or..a lawyer, among my little people who are now perhaps in petticoats.

1752 Lady M. W. Montagu Let. 22 July (1967) III. 15 How often do I fancy to my selfe the pleasure I should take in seeing you in the midst of your little people!

1876 C. M. Yonge Three Brides I. xvii. 282 My little people are so anxious to have me with them.

1934 H. G. Wells Exper. in Autobiogr. II. viii. 602 The Bastable family she created is still a joy to little people between ten and seventeen.

1972 A. Roudybush Sybaritic Death (1974) ii. 7 Tiled Beatrix Potter bunnies still scampered around the frieze..and windows, barred to prevent accidents to little people.

2004 Norwalk (Ohio) Reflector 26 Apr. a4/4 Very young children may be affected..by the programs their parents watch with the little people playing at their feet.

1719 Delphick Oracle Oct. 3 The Stories of these Fairies or little People, must proceed from those little People, about a Cubit, or 3 Spans in Height, call'd Pygmies.

a1731 G. Waldron Descr. Isle of Man 126 in Compl. Wks. (1731) As they confidently assert that the first Inhabitants of their Island were Fairies, so do they maintain that these little People have still their Residence among them.

1795 Gentleman's Mag. July 560/1 These little people (as we call them here) worked hard there day and night; and there are abundance of honest sober people who have heard them.

1831 J. Ritson Fairy Tales 61 (note) The idea of a fairy could never inspire but pleasing sensations; these little people being always distinguished for their innocent mirth, and benevolent utility.

1897 E. Phillpotts Lying Prophets x. 101 The li'l people takes all manner o' shaapes.

1941 C. Graves Thin Blue Line ix. 123 As he flew round, he wished that his instructor had never told him about the Little People—a mythological bunch of good and bad fairies originally invented by the Royal Naval Air Service in the Great War... Those awful little people, the Gremlins, who run up and down the wing with scissors going ‘snip, snap, snip’ made him sweat.

1973 Times 17 Mar. 14/8 The two larger clovers..were said to afford protection against ‘unkind Little People’.

2009 Fantasy & Sci. Fiction Apr. 223 Irish dockworkers sometimes swapped tall tales of mermaids and of little people, of selkie and of banshee.