Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of having a little or ignoble mind; littleness of mind; meanness: the opposite of magnanimity.
  • noun A person with a little or ignoble mind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state or quality of having a little or ignoble mind; pettiness; meanness; -- opposed to magnanimity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or quality of having a little or ignoble mind; pettiness; meanness.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin parvus little + animus mind.

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Examples

  • a sober estimate, hanging might be too heavy a price for the refutation of a single error; yet still, at times, when my moral sense is roused and provoked by the obstinate blindness of Professor Wilson to the meanness and _parvanimity_ [45] of Bonaparte (a blindness which in him, as in all other worshippers of false idols, is connected at the moment with intense hatred for those who refuse to partake in it),

    The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg Thomas De Quincey 1822

Comments

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  • JM wants to raise parvanimity to the level it deserves.

    February 16, 2011