runt

   Applied to a person, this word now usually refers to a person’s small size. In the seventeenth century it could also be applied to an ignorant person, and indeed, was first used in that way. It was later an insulting term for an ugly old woman, a hag, a meaning that survived longer in Scotland than anywhere else.

   A runt is a term for the smallest pig in a litter, though the word was earlier applied to a kind of sturdy but small ox or cow. It was also the correct term for the stump of a tree. All the senses contain the idea of smallness or under-development, which is the thought that lies behind the vocative.

   ‘You little runt’ would normally be an insult, but Sinclair Lewis gives a good example of conversion into a friendly term of address in Dodsworth: ‘Well, you fat little nint!’ said Sam, which meant ‘My dear old friend, I am enchanted to see you.’ The friend in question replies in kind with ‘you big stiff, you big bum’. ‘Where the hell have you been, you runt?’ says an American wife to her (small) husband in The Pleasure Man, by Mae West. The couple exchange insults on a regular basis. In the television series M.A.S.H. Frank Burns was also inclined to address Radar as ‘you little runt’ instead of ‘Corporal’.