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Tom Thumb

,

the nursery tale, is from the French Le Petit Poucet, by Charles Perrault (1630), but it is probably of Anglo-Saxon origin. There is in the Bodleian Library a ballad about Tom Thumb, “printed for John Wright in 1630.”

Tom Thumb. The son of a common ploughman and his wife, who was knighted by King Arthur, and was killed by the poisonous breath of a spider, in the reign of King Thunstone, the successor of Arthur. (Nursery tale.)

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Toledo
Tolmen (in French, Dolmen)
Tolosa
Tom
Tom Folio
Tom Fool’s Colours
Tom Foolery
Tom Long
Tom Raw
Tom Tailor
Tom Thumb
Tom Tidler’s Ground
Tom Tug
Tom and Jerry—i.e
Tom, Dick, and Harry
Tom oBedlams
Tomboy
Tomahawk
Tomb of Our Lord
Tommy Atkins (A)
Tommy Dodd

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Dwarfs (under three feet in height)