runt
nounUS, UK /ɹʌnt/ · Northern-England /ɹʊnt/
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".
9 senses
- 1The smallest animal of a litter.
- 2The smallest child in the family.
- 3Undersized or stunted plant, animal or person.
- 4An uninfluential or unimportant person; a nobody.
- 5An Ethernet packet that does not meet the medium's…
- 6A single word (or portion of a hyphenated word) that…
- 7A breed of pigeon related to the carrier pigeon.
- 8A hardened stem or stalk of a plant.
- 9A bow.
The smallest animal of a litter.
- 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.1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Kindle edition, OUP Oxford, published 2016, page 168:
Broadly The smallest child in the family.
- the runt of the family
Undersized or stunted plant, animal or person.
Slang An uninfluential or unimportant person; a nobody.
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Networking, Physical sciences, Sciences An Ethernet packet that does not meet the medium's minimum packet size of 64 bytes.
Media, Publishing, Typography A single word (or portion of a hyphenated word) that appears as the last line of a paragraph.
A breed of pigeon related to the carrier pigeon.
- Neither young poles nor old runts are durable1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book XVI.]”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], 1st tome, London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC:
A bow.
- Derived terms
- kale runt, runt disease, runted, runting, runtish, runtling, runt of the litter, runty