Extremely small or tiny; diminutive in size.
American English colloquialism from the 1890s, formed by combining 'teeny' (itself a variant of 'tiny') with the diminutive suffix '-sy'. The word represents a playful reduplication common in informal speech.
Teensy is part of a delightful family of reduplicative words in English that emphasize smallness through sound repetition, like 'itty-bitty' and 'teeny-weeny.' These words often appear in baby talk and informal speech because their repeated sounds feel naturally diminutive to our ears.
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