runt

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runt of the litter

The smallest and weakest person in a group, especially a group of siblings. (A "litter" is a group of newborn mammals, the smallest of which is least likely to thrive or survive.) Even though I'm the middle child, I've always been the runt of the litter in our family—even my younger sister picks on me because she's taller than I am.
See also: litter, of, runt
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

runt of the litter

 
1. Lit. the smallest animal born in a litter; the animal in a litter least likely to survive. No one wanted to buy the runt of the litter, so we kept it.
2. and the runt of the family Fig. the smallest child in the family. I was the runt of the litter and the butt of all the jokes.
See also: litter, of, runt
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

runt

n. a small person; someone whose growth has been stunted. (Also a rude term of address.) He can’t play basketball. He’s just a runt.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive ?
We're eager and grateful for each vivid bit of that past recaptured: her debutante milieu; her runty, randy groom; horseback riding; riding her horse's groom in the stables as she screams in sexual triumph.
Then he'd start the cycle all over again." When Myerson became famous representing the United States Football League in its 1986 antitrust action against the National Football League, "his runty swagger became even more pronounced." Another former colleague adds that Harvey is "like a cockroach.
"Show me someone who truly hates sweetness, and IEll show you someone to invite on a picnic," he says, "since you can eat all the delicious strawberries on top of the basket, and he can eat all the runty little green ones that sank to the bottom."
A new dinosaur discovered in what is now Patagonia had the runty forelimbs of a Tyrannosaurus rex but is no cousin of the giant iconic predator, researchers report July 13 in PLOS ONE.
In "Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F," the latest feature in the long-running anime franchise, the runty sycophant Sorbet revives the shredded super-villain Frieza, with a little help from the magical dragon Shenlong, thereby enabling Frieza to seek revenge on the Saiyan warriors Goku and Vegeta, who must heed the wise words of Beerus, the feline god of destruction, and Whis, martial artist extraordinaire, to save Earth from destruction.
[T]hey were simple, strong, warm-spirited, sly, rough, compassionate, jostling, tricky and extraordinarily good-natured because they had sex in their pockets, muscles on their back, hot eats around the corner, neighborhoods which dripped with the sauce of local legend, and real city architecture, brownstones with different windows on every floor, vistas for miles of redbrick and two-family wood-frame houses with balconies and porches, runty stunted trees rich as farmland in their promise of tenderness the first city evenings of spring, streets where kids played stick-ball and roller-hockey, lots of smoke and iron twilight.
LB: We're very into narrative, so part of the invented fantasy was that Runty was boycotting being a gull.
"I'm fascinated by the whole thing that the meek and the small and the runty and the wizened, those who aren't born with any favours, somehow they will save us.
Is it the one on the end of the short arm, belonging to the runty kid (I write as someone who was always in this category) or the one waved a foot above everyone belonging to the tall, gangly child?
If you want small birds, don't pick the runty ones, pick the small ones that have good shape and are healthy specimens.
Caley have a doubt over striker Brian P runty, who has a virus.
THERE'S a trailer on TV at the moment for the film Shark Tale in which the godfather shark explains to runty hero Oscar his place in the grand marine scheme of things.
Like that pink-eyed albino boy in eighth grade whose mother was a Baptist missionary in Russia; or that squirmy runty auto mechanic's son who sold cocaine cut with cornstarch, and whose grandfather spent his days combing Galilee's vacant lots with a metal det ector.
Pull late tillers as they sprout and runty lower ears before they swell.
She told Matthew Perry, who plays Chandler: "I am obviously your runty alternative."