dwarf

1. 1.

   make appear small by comparison

   “This year's debt dwarfs that of last year”

   Synonymsshadowovershadow

   Broaderdominate
2. 2.

   check the growth of

   “the lack of sunlight dwarfed these pines”

   Broaderstunt

Other forms of dwarf

plural

dwarves

past tense

dwarfed·

present participle

dwarfing·

third person

dwarfs·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about dwarf

What does dwarf mean?

dwarf means "a person who is markedly small". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in dwarf?

dwarf has 1 syllable: dwarf. In IPA it is /ˈdwɔɹf/.

What is another word for dwarf?

Close synonyms include midget, nanus, gnome, shadow, overshadow. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dwarf a common word?

dwarf is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.