dwarfess

English

Alternative forms

Etymology
a 17th-century dwarfess (sense 1)

dwarf +‎ -ess

Noun

dwarfess (plural dwarfesses)

  1. (dated) A human female dwarf.
    • 1847, Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England‎, volume XIII, page 247:
      Gibson and his wife were among the best English-born artists of their era. He was just three feet six inches in height; she was a dwarfess of the same proportion. This little couple had nine good-sized children, and having weathered the storms of civil war, lived happily together to old age.
    • 1958 November 24, “Ithaca and 'Lolita'”, in Newsweek, page 155:
      “I have no idea what they will do with it,” he [Vladimir Nabokov] said. “Of course they will have to change the plot. Perhaps they will make Lolita a dwarfess. Or they will make her 16 and Humbert 26. I just don’t know. It’s difficult to translate a book into a movie.”
    • 1980, Lilli Palmer, A Time to Embrace‎, page 201:
      Beside him stood a dwarfess, even smaller than he was, snub-nosed and doll-faced.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:dwarfess.
    Synonym: dwarfette
  2. (fantasy) A female of the dwarf race.
    • 1990, Tanith Lee, “White As Sin, Now”, in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (editors), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Third Annual Collection, St. Martin's Press, 0-312-04450-X, page 328,
      Heracty has been told that the flaxen dwarfess once had an adventure in the mock forest below the Palace.
    • 2004, James Haberlin, Brian Haberlin, But, But...Barbarians?, page 207:
      She was a silver-haired, rather portly dwarfess...and the most powerful enchantress in Ilsdale, if not in the known world.
    • 2014, Fujino Omori, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?‎, volume 1, page 51:
      Opening the door, I immediately see a stout dwarfess, probably the owner, behind a counter and a group of young cat-people girls in aprons serving food and alcohol to customers.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:dwarfess.
    Synonyms: dwarfette, dwarfmaid, dwarrowdam
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