Careful Words

dwarf (n.)

dwarf (v.)

  I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.

Robert Burton (1576-1640): Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.

A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two.

George Herbert (1593-1632): Jacula Prudentum.

  A dwarf sees farther than the giant when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): The Friend. Sec. i. Essay 8.