> "small minds" is belittling

- surely precisely because it is appealing to an objective fact that is extremely offensive if it can be thouhgt to be true?

I sense that small get used as a more objective relative size term, whereas little depends much more on cultural context. Marianna, like the little brother who is in fact the Incredible Hulk, I have heard people refer to their "little house in the country" which is actually a larger-than-average family house compared with other rural houses... they use the diminutive term "little" to imply a range of connotations embodying other social prestiege markers and so on - just like patting the 'little boy' on the head and saying how cute he is!

I suspect this is in part because 'little' is such a favourite word used by young children: "There was this littwl littwl house, wiv a littwl littwl man, and the man had littwl littwl hands wiv littwl littwl fingers, and on his finger he had a littwl littwl ring, and on the ring..."