Hop-o'-my-thumb
noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A very small person or creature. colloquial, dated
"1830, Uncredited (John Poole), The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part 1: Original Papers, page 81, As to changing them for a pack of your little hop-o'-my-thumbs, no bigger than the one you lent me t'other night — ! suppose I should ask you to let me have the mare you rode to cover o'Thursday — and a clever mare she is, […] ."
Example
More examples"1830, Uncredited (John Poole), The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part 1: Original Papers, page 81, As to changing them for a pack of your little hop-o'-my-thumbs, no bigger than the one you lent me t'other night — ! suppose I should ask you to let me have the mare you rode to cover o'Thursday — and a clever mare she is, […] ."
Etymology
From the idea that such a person could hop over somebody's thumb; in common use in the 16th century.
More for "hop-o'-my-thumb"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.