different between little vs wee

English

Etymology

From Middle English litel, from Old English l?tel, from Proto-Germanic *l?tilaz (“tending to stoop, crouched, little”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewd- (“to bend, bent, small”), equivalent to lout +? -le. Cognate with Dutch luttel, regional German lütt and lützel, West Frisian lyts, Low German lütt, Old High German luzzil, Middle High German lützel, Old English l?tan (“to bow, bend low”); and perhaps to Old English lytig (“deceitful, lot deceit”), Gothic ???????????????????? (liuts, “deceitful”), ???????????????????????? (lutjan, “to deceive”); compare also Icelandic lítill (“little”), Swedish liten, Danish liden, lille, Gothic ???????????????????????????? (leitils), which appear to have a different root vowel. More at lout.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?l?t?l/, [?l?tl?], [?l?.t???]
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?l?tl?/, [?l?.???], [???.??]
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /?l?tl?/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /?l?.???/
• Rhymes: -?t?l
• Hyphenation: lit?tle
• Homophone: Littell

Adjective

little (comparative less or lesser or littler, superlative least or littlest)

1. Small in size.

2. Insignificant, trivial.
   1. (offensive) Used to belittle a person.

3. Very young.

4. (of a sibling) Younger.

5. (also Little) Used with the name of a place, especially of a country or its capital, to denote a neighborhood whose residents or storekeepers are from that place.
   • 1871 October 18, The One-eyed Philosopher [pseudonym], "Street Corners", in Judy: or the London serio-comic journal, volume 9, page 255 [1]:

     If you want to find Little France, take any turning on the north side of Leicester square, and wander in a zigzag fashion Oxford Streetwards. The Little is rather smokier and more squalid than the Great France upon the other side of the Manche.

   • 2004, Barry Miles, Zappa: A Biography, 2005 edition, ?ISBN, page 5:

     In the forties, hurdy-gurdy men could still be heard in all those East Coast cities with strong Italian neighbourhoods: New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston. A visit to Baltimore's Little Italy at that time was like a trip to Italy itself.

   • 2020, Richa Bhosale, "Croatian Hall in need of repairs to remain open," Timmins Daily Press:

     "The theatre was bought by the Croatian immigrants as so many immigrants came here in the ’30s and mostly for mining jobs, but in Schumacher itself it was called little Zagreb, and Zagreb is the capital city of Croatia. There were so many of them that they wanted to have their own little community, so they bought the theatre and they renovated it at that time, remodelled it and made it into a Croatian Hall," she explained.

6. Having few members.

7. Short in duration; brief.

   I feel better after my little sleep.

8. Small in extent of views or sympathies; narrow; shallow; contracted; mean; illiberal; ungenerous.

   • The long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise, / Because their natures are little.

   • 2001, Nicholas Petsalis-Diomidis, The Unknown Callas: the Greek Years, pg 547.

     Showing unmistakably what a little person he really was, in June 1949 he wrote his newly married daughter with nauseating disregard for the truth

Usage notes

Some authorities regard both littler and littlest as non-standard. The OED says of the word little: "the adjective has no recognized mode of comparison. The difficulty is commonly evaded by resort to a synonym (as smaller, smallest); some writers have ventured to employ the unrecognized forms littler, littlest, which are otherwise confined to dialect or imitations of childish or illiterate speech." The forms lesser and least are encountered in animal names such as lesser flamingo and least weasel.

Antonyms

• (small): large, big
• (young): big
• (younger): big

Derived terms

Translations

Adverb

little (comparative less or lesser, superlative least)

1. Not much.

   We slept very little last night.

   • Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.

2. Not at all.

Antonyms

• much

Translations

Determiner

little (comparative less, superlative least)

1. Not much, only a little: only a small amount (of).

   There is (very) little water left.

   We had very little to do.

Usage notes

• Little is used with uncountable nouns, few with plural countable nouns.
• Little can be used with or without an article. With the indefinite article, the emphasis is that there is indeed some, albeit not much:

We have a little money, so we'll probably get by.

With no article or the definite article (or what), the emphasis is on the scarcity:

We have little money, and little hope of getting more.

The little (or What little) money we have is all going to pay for food and medication, so we can't save any.

See also

• a little

Antonyms

• (not much): much

Translations

Pronoun

little

1. Not much; not a large amount.

   Little is known about his early life.

Noun

little (plural littles)

1. A small amount.

   Can I try a little of that sauce?

   Many littles make a mickle. (Scottish proverb)

   Little did he do to make me comfortable.

   If you want some cake, there's a little in the refrigerator

2. (BDSM, slang) The participant in ageplay who acts out the younger role.
3. (colloquial, college slang) A newly initiated member of a sorority.

Antonyms

• (BDSM): big

Derived terms

• little space

Related terms

• a little
• li'l, li'l', lil
• little by little
• little old
• belittle (cognate verb)

Anagrams

• tillet

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: w?, IPA^(key): /wi?/
• Rhymes: -i?
• Homophones: oui, we, whee (in accents with the wine-whine merger), Wii

Etymology 1

From Middle English wey, weygh, wegh, we?e, wæ?e (“little bit”), from Old English w??, w??e (“weight”), from Proto-Germanic *w?g? (“scales, weight”) and *w?g? (“weight”), related to Middle English we?an (“to move, weigh”) (15c).

Adjective

wee (comparative weer, superlative weest)

1. (Scotland, Ireland, Northern England, New Zealand) Small, little.
   • 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, p. 73:

     I had not seen a wee boy do it like that before. He was weer than me and his swimming was just like splashing about.

   You looked a little cold, so I lit a wee fire.

Translations

Noun

wee

1. A short time or short distance.

References

• Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: Tenth Edition (1997)

Etymology 2

Onomatopoeic for the sound of urination. The noun derives from the verb.

Noun

wee (uncountable)

1. (colloquial, uncountable) Urine.
2. (colloquial) An act of urination.

   I need to have a wee

Synonyms

• (all senses): wee-wee
• (urine): See Thesaurus:urine
• (urination): See Thesaurus:urination

Translations

Verb

wee (third-person singular simple present wees, present participle weeing, simple past and past participle weed)

1. (colloquial) To urinate.

Synonyms

• wee-wee, see also Thesaurus:urinate

Derived terms

• wee-wee

Translations

Etymology 3

• see we

Pronoun

wee (personal pronoun)

1. obsolete emphatic of we
   • 1645 Marhc, John Milton, Tetrachordon.

Anagrams

• Ewe, eew, ewe

Afar

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /we?/

Verb

wee

1. (transitive) to lack

References

• Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015) L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)?^[1], Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis)

Dutch

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *wai. Compare Old English w? (English woe), Old High German w? (German weh), Old Norse vei.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?e?/
• Rhymes: -e?

Adjective

wee (not comparable)

1. nauseating

Inflection

Noun

wee f (plural weeën, diminutive weetje n)

1. contraction during labour or childbirth

2. (archaic) sorrow, sadness, pain, woe (used in interjections of despair or annoyance)

Derived terms

• (sorrow): o wee, ach en wee, heimwee

Anagrams

• Ewe

Kikuyu

Pronoun

wee (second person singular)

1. Alternative spelling of we (“you, thou”)

Middle Dutch

Etymology

From Old Dutch *w?, from Proto-Germanic *wai.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /we?/

Interjection

wêe

1. woe!

Descendants

• Dutch: wee

Adjective

wêe

1. unpleasant, painful

Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Descendants

• Dutch: wee

Noun

wêe f

1. pain

Inflection

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

Descendants

• Dutch: wee
• Limburgish: wieë

Further reading

• “wee”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• Verwijs, E.; Verdam, J. (1885–1929) , “wee (I)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ?ISBN, page I

Middle English

Noun

wee

1. Alternative form of we (“woe”)

Scots

Pronunciation

• enPR: w?, IPA^(key): /wi?/

Adjective

wee (comparative weer, superlative weest)

1. (standard, Ulster) small, little, tiny

Yola

Pronoun

wee

1. we

Preposition

wee

1. with

References

Jacob Poole (1867) , William Barnes, editor, A glossary, with some pieces of verse, of the old dialect of the English colony in the baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, J. Russell Smith, ?ISBN