peewee

See also: pewee and pee-wee

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpiːwiː/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːwi

Etymology 1

Probably reduplication of wee (“small”).

Noun

peewee (plural peewees)

1. (informal) A short or small person; a small object.
2. A kind of small marble in children's games.
   • 2011, Jamie MacLennan, ZhaoHui Tang, Bogdan Crivat, Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008:

     You separate the marbles by color until you have four groups, but then you notice that some of the marbles are regulars, some are shooters, and some are peewees.

3. (US, sports) A player in a sports league for very young children.

   Is five too young for peewee football?

   • 1971 November, Pat Strange, Mini Judoka in Aussie Ladies Tourney, Black Belt, page 61,

     Each year, younger and younger girls line up for competition on the mats, and at this year′s Western Australia Women′s Judo Tournament extra peewee divisions were added to accomodate^[sic] the young ladies.

Derived terms

• peewee golf

Etymology 2

Probably from onomatopoeia of the birds' songs.

Noun

A female magpie-lark in Sydney

peewee (plural peewees)

1. (Australia, New South Wales and Queensland) A magpie-lark or mudlark (Grallina cyanoleuca).
   • 1939, Francis Ratcliffe, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand: The Adventures of a Biologist in Australia, page 43:

     A large flock of black and white peewees—magpie larks—passed over our heads from a patch of mangrove […] .

   • 1964, Carl Weismann, Australian Bird Songs, page 15:

     The studies of A. H. Robinson in Western Australia indicate that Peewees tend to pair for life, and hold the same territory on successive seasons.

   • 2004, William McGregor, The Languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia, page 2:

     Many Kimberley languages call the peewee or mudlark diyadiya (pronounced like ‘dear-dear’) after one of its calls; […] .

2. A pewee.

See also

• peewee on Wikipedia.Wikipedia