Runt

Quick meaning: Runt is a noun meaning The smallest animal of a litter.

Meaning

The smallest animal of a litter.

More Meanings

1. (by extension) The smallest child in the family.
2. Undersized or stunted plant, animal or person.
3. (networking) An Ethernet packet that does not meet the medium's minimum packet size of 64 bytes.
4. (typography) A single word (or portion of a hyphenated word) that appears as the last line of a paragraph.
5. A breed of pigeon related to the carrier pigeon.
6. (slang) An uninfluential or unimportant person; a nobody.
7. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A hardened stem or stalk of a plant.

Example Sentences

the runt of the family

Neither young poles nor old runts are durable

Sometimes, as we have seen, one member of a litter is a runt, much smaller than the rest. He is unable to fight for food as strongly as the rest, and runts often die. We have considered the conditions under which it would actually pay a mother to let a runt die.

Word Forms

• runts

Synonyms for runt

Depending on context, synonyms include dwarf, shrimp, peewee, half-pint.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include peewee, half-pint, shrimp, pipsqueak, shorty, belligerent.

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