dwarfess

English

Alternative forms

• dwarvess (rare)

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^[1], 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^[2], 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,^[3] 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?‎^[4], 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