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lesser

adj
/ˈlɛsɚ/US/ˈlɛsə/UK

Etymology

From less + -er.

  1. inherited from lesse
  2. inherited from lessen
  3. derived from *laisiz✻ — “smaller, lesser, fewer, lower”
  4. inherited from *laisizan-✻
  5. inherited from lǣssa — “less”
  6. inherited from lees
  7. derived from *leh₂is-✻
  8. derived from *leys-✻ — “to shrink, grow thin, be gentle”
  9. inherited from *laisiz✻
  10. inherited from lǣs — “smaller, less”
  11. inherited from les
  12. suffixed as lesser — “less + er”

Definitions

  1. comparative form of little

    comparative form of little: more little

  2. Of two (or, rarely, more than two) things

    Of two (or, rarely, more than two) things: the smaller in size (littler), in value, in importance etc.

    • lesser panda
    • lesser yellowlegs

  3. a thing that is of smaller size, value, importance etc.

    • The greater sand hills increasingly do not migrate, but almost all lessers do.
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. A surname.

      • Into them Lesser inserts three intentionally similar heroines, annoying American expats in Cambridge, England,[ ]whose Anglophilia leads to a quite unwarranted amount of sightseeing.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at lesser. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01lesser02importance03worthy04honourable05standard06excellence07excels08excel09better

A definitional loop anchored at lesser. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

9 hops · closes at lesser

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA