[f. KING sb. + -LET.]
1. A petty king; a king ruling over a small territory. Mostly contemptuous. Cf. KINGLING 1.
1603. Florio, Montaigne, I. xlii. (1632), 143. Cæsar termeth all the Lords … to be Kinglets, or pettie Kings [= reguli]. Ibid. (1634), 146. So many petty-kings, and petty-petty kinglets have we now adayes.
1807. G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. III. vii. 388. Sitrig, the kinglet of Northumberland.
1831. Carlyle, Misc., Early Germ. Lit. (1872), III. 198. Who … ventured into the field against even the greatest of these kinglets.
1865. Pall Mall Gaz., 12 Aug., 11/1. The Kinglets of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma.
1882. Daily News, 16 Aug., 5/2. The Zulu King is to be restored under conditions … the same as those that Sir Garnet Wolseley imposed upon his thirteen Kinglets.
2. A popular name of the Golden-crested Wren, Regulus cristatus; also of two allied N. American species, R. satrapa and R. calendula.
1839–43. Yarrell, Hist. Birds, I. 347. The little Golden-Crested Regulus, or Kinglet … has a soft and pleasing song.
1869. J. Burroughs, in The Galaxy, VIII. Aug., 173. Wilson called the Kinglets Wrens.
1884. E. P. Roe, in Harper’s Mag., March, 614/2. The golden-crested kinglet is a little mite of a bird.
