Midget

Midget refers to something which is smaller than usual but well-proportioned.

In the 19th century, midget was a medical term referring to an extremely short but normally proportioned person (e.g., with growth hormone deficiency), and was used in contrast to dwarf, which denoted disproportionate shortness. Like many other old medical terms, as it became part of popular language it was usually used in a pejorative sense. When applied to a person who is extremely short, "midget" is now considered derogatory.

"Midget" is a general term, however, and is also used for example to denote a class of small objects, such as a class of very small sailboats or racing cars. It also refers to a model of automobile produced by MG.

Moreover it refers to a sort of smiley or more precisely said a sort of emoticon. An emoticon is a set of characters like :-) :-( or :-D that convey an emotion when looked 90 degrees rotated; tilt your head to the left in case you don't recognize it as a face. A midget emoticon is an emoticon without the nose, so without the hyphen. Examples are:

   :)      :(      :D      :P

Note that as of 2004 the instant messenging software programs AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ don't support midget emoticons. The instant messenger Yahoo! Messenger does, as does MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger