0 very small:
1 a word or part of a word that expresses the fact that something is small, often used either to show affection or to suggest something or someone is not important:
2 small:
My grandmother was a diminutive woman, less than 5 feet tall.
A disastrous chain of events nearly wiped out California's diminutive island fox.
In the photo, Abraham Lincoln looms over his diminutive rival for the White House, Stephen Douglas, in 1860.
In other words, Russian diminutive affixes happen to be especially strong and salient cues to noun gender.
In his Growth and Structure of the English Language, Otto Jespersen noted how few diminutives English has, and how little it uses them.
The article discusses Spanish diminutives in mother-child conversation.
This spelling difference is a reflection of the non-standardized and informal nature of diminutives, not unlike doggie/doggy in English.
They held posters saying "We love you Misha," the diminutive of Mikheil by which the president is universally known.
