Dictionary Definition
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -ʌnt
Noun
- The smallest animal of a litter.
- Undersized or stunted plant, animal or person.
- An Ethernet packet that does not meet the medium's minimum packet size of 64 bytes.
- In the context of "typography": A single word (or portion of a hyphenated word) that appears as the last line of a paragraph.
Translations
animal
- Finnish: pahnanpohjimmainen, pesueen pienin
- French: avorton
undersized or stunted plant, animal or person
Adjective
runt- indefinite form positive singular neuter of rund
Adverb
runt- aimlessly
- at random locations
- in a manner that involves a lot of transportation
Preposition
runtSynonyms
Extensive Definition
In a group of animals (usually a litter of
animals born in multiple births), a runt is a member which is
smaller and/or weaker than the others. http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?runt.
Due to its small size, a runt in a litter faces some disadvantages,
including difficulty in competing with its siblings for survival
and possible rejection from its mother. Therefore, in the wild, a
runt is less likely to survive to infancy. Rellington Vagner was
one of the first Biologists to study this phenomena in his work
"Parental-Offspring Relations". Even among domestic
animals, runts often face rejection. A runt may be a parent's way of 'hedging its
bets'—if food is plentiful, it gets an extra offspring,
if not, it lets it die having invested
little in it in the first place. Although this may generate
parent-offspring conflict, there will come a point where the
runt should, at least in theory, allow itself to die or even be
eaten
by its siblings or
parent.
In literature
- Wilbur the pig from Charlotte's Web is a runt.
- Shade the bat from Silverwing is a runt.
- Fiver from Watership Down is a runt.
- Clifford the Big Red Dog is a runt when he is born, but he eventually grows to be 25 feet tall.
- Ruth from the Dragonriders of Pern series is a runt.
See also
References
- Journal of Animal Science, Vol 75, Issue 5 1237-1243, Copyright © 1997 by American Society of Animal Science
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Lilliputian, Tom Thumb, a
nobody, a nothing, bantam, banty, brownie, button, chit, cipher, common man, diminutive, dummy, dwarf, elf, featherweight, figurehead, fingerling, gnome, homunculus, insignificancy, jackstraw, lightweight, lilliputian, little fellow,
little guy, man of straw, manikin, mediocrity, midge, midget, mini, minikin, minnow, minny, mouse, nebbish, nobody one knows,
nonentity, nubbin, obscurity, peewee, pip-squeak, pony, punk, pygmy, scrub, shrimp, slip, small fry, small potato,
small potatoes, snip,
snippet, squirt, squit, tit, wart, whiffet, whippersnapper, wisp