Brewer's: Short

My name is Short. I'm in a hurry and cannot wait.

“Well, but let us hear the wishes (said the old man); my name is short, and I cannot stay much longer.” —W.Yeats: Fairy Tales of the Irish Peasantry. p. 240.

Short Stature (Noted Men of). Aetius, commander of the Roman army in the days of Valentinian; Agesilaus (5 syl.) “Statura fuit humili, et corpore exiguo, et claudius altero pede” (Nepos); Alexander the Great, scarcely middle height; Attla, “the scourge of God,” broad-shouldered, thick-set, sinewy, and short; Byron, Cervantes, Claverhouse, Condé the Great, Cowper, Cromwell, Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Kepple (called

“Little Kepple”), Louis XIV., barely 5 feet 5 inches; Marshal Luxembourg; nicknamed “the Little”; Mehemet Ali, Angelo; Napoleon I., le petit caporal, was, according to his school certificate, 5 feet: Lord Nelson, St. Paul, Pepin le Bref, Philip of Macedon (scarcely middle height), Richard Savage, Shakespeare; Socrates was stumpy; Theodore II., King of the Goths, stout, short of stature, very strong (so says Cassiodorus); Timon the Tartar, self-described as lame, decrepit, and of little weight; Dr. Isaac Watts, etc.

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