Loading page
say it: lil-uh-PYOO-shuhn
lilliputian is an adjective and noun meaning "tiny; relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Lilliput". It carries 5 recorded senses.
tiny; relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Lilliput
“the Lilliputian population”
(informal) small and of little importance
“a fiddling sum of money”
“a footling gesture”
“our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war”
“a little (or small) matter”
“a dispute over niggling details”
“limited to petty enterprises”
“piffling efforts”
“giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction”
colloquialism
a very small person (resembling a Lilliputian)
a 6-inch tall inhabitant of Lilliput in a novel by Jonathan Swift
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for lilliputian come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.