runt
/ɹʌnt/ noun
Forms runts
- noun The smallest animal of a litter.
- noun (by extension) The smallest child in the family. “the runt of the family”
- noun Undersized or stunted plant, animal or person.
- noun (slang) An uninfluential or unimportant person; a nobody.
- noun (networking) An Ethernet packet that does not meet the medium's minimum packet size of 64 bytes.
- noun (typography) A single word (or portion of a hyphenated word) that appears as the last line of a paragraph.
- noun A breed of pigeon related to the carrier pigeon.
- noun (obsolete, UK, dialect) A hardened stem or stalk of a plant.
Synonyms
Etymology
The OED classifies this word as "of obscure origin". Some see a connection to Middle Dutch runt (“ox”), but the OED considers this to be unlikely. Possibly connected to Icelandic hrotti meaning "brute".
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “runt”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details