gnomish


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gnome 1

 (nōm)
n.
1. One of a fabled race of dwarflike creatures who live underground and guard treasure hoards.
2. In the occult philosophy of Paracelsus, a being that has earth as its element.

[French, from New Latin gnomus, earth elemental in the occult philosophy of Paracelsus, of unknown origin.]

gnom′ish adj.

gnome 2

 (nōm)
n.
A pithy saying that expresses a general truth or fundamental principle; an aphorism.

[Greek gnōmē, from gignōskein, to know; see gnō- in Indo-European roots.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adj.1.gnomish - used of small deformed creatures
little, small - limited or below average in number or quantity or magnitude or extent; "a little dining room"; "a little house"; "a small car"; "a little (or small) group"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
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While this conflict was brewing on the frontlines, gnomish scholars had retreated into the lands of the Summer Fae, where they worked on a magical contraption called the Well of Souls, a device that could bring back mortals to use in the fight against the Tuatha Deohn.
Gnomish from Artemis Fowl is an easy language to learn to read, as it is a simple substitution cipher.
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Squeaking Tribe's remarkable and expressive puppets are characters from traditional literature; the child full of wonder and uncertainty, the young man, curious but ineffective and ultimately the white haired, gnomish old man, still steadfast but full of regret.
BERNIE ECCLESTONE IS A GNOMISH Brit ex-grease monkey who is my neighbor in Gstaad, the small alpine Swiss village that once upon a time was the Mecca of the old rich and titled, now slowly turning into the playground of the nouveau riche and vulgar.
Kapuscinski--by all accounts a gnomish, affable personality--exploded after a cocktail party where a post-communist bureaucrat glibly named Polish diplomats he thought had been Soviet agents.
Another misguided chap was that gnomish little millionaire, Andrew Lloyd Webber, who announced that sex had never been all that important to him.
Kathy and Ron Metzger have more than 300 of the twisted little sculptures, all based on gnomish figures created by North Carolina artist Tom Clark.
The memoir contains wonderful character sketches of the people he met on his trips: his dowdy hostess Mariana, who pesters him about the value of her silverware; the gnomish Khrustalyov, a Gogolian "little man" who had worked all his life in utter obscurity collecting documents about the last days of the Romanovs; and the shifty FSB bureaucrats Brent visits at the Lubyanka ("the tallest building in Moscow because you could see Siberia from its basement").
Other Hudson Valley denizens claimed to have heard as children, whenever thunder rumbled in the mountains, the tale of Henrik Hudson and his gnomish bowlers, as if it were a folktale eons old rather than Irving's invention.