What is "diminutives"

Usage examples of "diminutives".

Actually his name was Dmitrii, but it is amazing how many diminutives there are in the Russian language for any name, each diminutive expressing a certain distinct attitude towards the person.

But Major Gideon Withers, for some reason or other, married a slender, sensitive, nervous, romantic woman, which accounted for the fact that his son David, "King David," as he was called in his time, had a very different set of tastes from his father, showing a turn for literature and sentiment in his youth, reading Young's "Night Thoughts," and Thomson's "Seasons," and sometimes in those early days writing verses himself to Celia or to Chloe, which sounded just as fine to him as Effie and Minnie sound to young people now, as Musidora, as Saccharissa, as Lesbia, as Helena, as Adah and Zillah, have all sounded to young people in their time,--ashes of roses as they are to us now, and as our endearing Scotch diminutives will be to others by and by.