animalcule \an-uh-MAL-kyool\,
noun:
1. a minute or microscopic animal, nearly or quite invisible to the naked eye, as an infusorian or rotifer.
2. Archaic. a tiny animal, as a mouse or fly.
But man contemplates the universe as an animalcule would an elephant.
-- Edward Buwler-Lytton, "Zanoni," 1842
He has absolutely no idea of the prodigious personage that I am, and of the microscopic animalcule that he is in comparison.
-- Marcel Proust, translated by D. J. Enright, "In Search of Lost Time," 1989, originally published in 1927
Animalcule comes directly from the Neo-Latin word animalculum meaning "a small animal."
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