Little vs Major - What's the difference?
little | major |
Small in size.
Insignificant, trivial.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=
, volume=189, issue=2, page=30, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= Very young.
(of a sibling) Younger.
* 1871 October 18, The One-eyed Philosopher [pseudonym], "Street Corners", in Judy: or the London serio-comic journal , volume 9, page 255 [http://books.google.com/books?id=_B4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA255]:
* 2004 , Barry Miles, Zappa: A Biography , 2005 edition, ISBN 080214215X, page 5:
Small in amount or number, having few members.
Short in duration; brief.
Small in extent of views or sympathies; narrow; shallow; contracted; mean; illiberal; ungenerous.
* Tennyson
Not much.
:
*
*:Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.
Not at all.
:
*
*:But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶, and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was levelled at them.
*{{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 13, author=Alistair Magowan, work=BBC Sport
, title= Not much, only a little: only a small amount (of).
(en noun), or, when used as a title before a person's name , Major
a military rank between captain and lieutenant colonel
Of great significance or importance.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=
, volume=189, issue=2, page=10, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= Greater in number, quantity, or extent.
Of full legal age; having attained majority.
(music) Of a scale which follows the pattern: tone - tone - semitone - tone - tone - tone - semitone
(music) Being the larger of two intervals denoted by the same ordinal number.
(music) Containing the note which is a major third (four half steps) above the tonic.
(US, Canada, Australia, and, New Zealand) The main area of study of a student working toward a degree at a college or university.
(US, Canada, Australia, and, New Zealand) A student at a college or university concentrating on a given area of study.
A person of legal age.
(logic) The major premise.
(Canadian football) An alternate term for touchdown; short for "major score".
A large, commercially successful record label, as opposed to an indie.
* 2005 , Billboard (volume 117, number 3, 15 January 2005, page 36)
to concentrate on a particular area of study as a student in a college or university
As a proper noun little
is .As an adjective major is
.little
English
(wikipedia little)Adjective
Chico Harlan
Japan pockets the subsidy …, passage=Across Japan, technology companies and private investors are racing to install devices that until recently they had little interest in: solar panels. Massive solar parks are popping up as part of a rapid build-up that one developer likened to an "explosion."}}
- If you want to find Little' France, take any turning on the north side of Leicester square, and wander in a zigzag fashion Oxford Streetwards. The ' Little is rather smokier and more squalid than the Great France upon the other side of the Manche.
- In the forties, hurdy-gurdy men could still be heard in all those East Coast cities with strong Italian neighbourhoods: New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston. A visit to Baltimore's Little Italy at that time was like a trip to Italy itself.
- a little sleep
- The long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise, / Because their natures are little .
Usage notes
Some authorities regard both littler' and '''littlest''' as non-standard. The OED says of the word little: "''the adjective has no recognized mode of comparison. The difficulty is commonly evaded by resort to a synonym (as smaller, smallest); some writers have ventured to employ the unrecognized forms littler, littlest, which are otherwise confined to dialect or imitations of childish or illiterate speech.''" The forms '''lesser''' and ' least are encountered in animal names such as lesser flamingo and least weasel.Antonyms
* (small) large, big * (young) big * (younger) bigAdverb
Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd, passage=But as United saw the game out, little did they know that, having looked likely to win their 13th Premier League title, it was City who turned the table to snatch glory from their arch-rivals' grasp.}}
Antonyms
* muchDeterminer
- There is little water left.
- We had very little to do.
Usage notes
* is used with uncountable nouns, few with plural countable nouns.Antonyms
* (not much) muchmajor
English
Alternative forms
* majour (obsolete)Etymology 1
From (etyl)Alternative forms
* (abbreviation)Noun
(wikipedia major)- He used to be a major in the army.
- This is Major Jones.
Usage notes
When used as a title, it is always capitalized. : Example: Major Jane Payne. The rank corresponds to pay grade O-4. Abbreviations: Maj. and MAJ.Etymology 2
(etyl) , from Proto-Indo-European *ma?-yes-'' "greater", comparative of ''*ma?-, *me?- , "great".Adjective
Karen McVeigh
US rules human genes can't be patented, passage=The US supreme court has ruled unanimously that natural human genes cannot be patented, a decision that scientists and civil rights campaigners said removed a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation.}}
- the major part of the assembly
- a major scale.
Derived terms
* majorlyAntonyms
* minorNoun
(en noun)- Midway through his second year of college, he still hadn't chosen a major .
- She is a math major .
- He says Ninja Tune retains the master and publishing rights on most of its catalog, making it easy to license quickly. Yet as majors jump on the videogame bandwagon, he fears indies may lose that outlet.
Antonyms
* (a person of legal age) minorVerb
(en verb)- I have decided to major in mathematics.
