A pygmy is a member of an ethnic group whose average height is unusually short; anthropologists define pygmy as a member of any group where adult men are on average less than 150 cm (4 feet 11 inches) tall. A member of a slightly taller group is termed "pygmoid".
The term is most associated with peoples of Central Africa, such as the Aka, Efé and Mbuti. If the term pygmy is defined as a group's men having an average height below 1.55 meters (5 feet 1 inch), then there are also pygmies in Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Andaman Islands,Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Bolivia, and Brazil, including some Negritos of Southeast Asia.
The term pygmy, as used to refer to diminutive people, derives from Greek πυγμαῖος pygmaios via Latin Pygmaei (sing. Pygmaeus), derived from πυγμή – meaning a fist, or a measure of length corresponding to the distance between the elbow and knuckles. (See also Greek pechus.) In Greek mythology the word describes a tribe of dwarfs, first described by Homer, the ancient Greek poet, and reputed to live in India and south of modern-day Ethiopia.
The Pygmies (Greek: Πυγμαῖοι Pygmaioi, from the adjective πυγμαῖος from πυγμή pygmē, "the length of the forearm") were a tribe of diminutive humans in Greek mythology. According to the Iliad, they were involved in a constant war with the cranes, which migrated in winter to their homeland on the southern shores of the earth-encircling river Oceanus. One story describes the origin of the age-old battle, speaking of a Pygmy Queen named Gerana who offended the goddess Hera with her boasts of superior beauty, and was transformed into a crane.
In art the scene was popular with little Pygmies armed with spears and slings, riding on the backs of goats, battling the flying cranes. The 2nd-century BC tomb near Panticapaeum, Crimea "shows the battle of human pygmies with a flock of herons".
The Pygmies were often portrayed as pudgy, comical dwarfs.
In another legend, the Pygmies once encountered Heracles, and climbing all over the sleeping hero attempted to bind him down, but when he stood up they fell off. The story was adapted by Jonathan Swift as a template for Lilliputians.
Pygmy is an epistolary novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It was released on May 5, 2009.
The plot revolves around a 13-year-old boy named Agent Number 67 from an unnamed, totalitarian state described as a "mash-up of North Korea, Cuba, Communist-era China, and Nazi-era Germany", as an exchange student to live with an American family from an unnamed Midwestern location as a sleeper agent to execute a terrorist attack on the United States codenamed "Operation Havoc". Nicknamed "Pygmy" by his American family for his diminutive size, he is introduced into the rituals of modern American life such as enrolling in public school and going to church.
He sodomizes a bully, who had been victimizing his host brother, in the bathroom of a Wal-Mart. The scene is described in graphic detail. This is only the first of many acts committed by the operative in order to adjust to American life while preparing with his fellow operatives, who are also masquerading as exchange students, to execute "Operation Havoc".
I heard you sing a rebel song,
sung it loud and all alone.
We can't afford the things you save,
we can't afford the warranty.
I see you walking in the glare
down the county road we share.
Our southern blood, my heresy,
damn that ol' confederacy.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
I'm sorry for what you have learned,
when you feel the tables turn.
To run so hard in your race,
now you find who set the pace.
The landed aristocracy
exploiting all your enmity.
All your daddies fought in vain,
leave you with the mark of Cain.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to
become you, become you.
The center holds, so they say.
It never held too well for me.
I won't stop short for common ground
that vilifies the trodden down.
The center held the bonded slave
for the sake of industry.
The center held the bloody hand
of the executioner man.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to