antlike

ant +‎ -like

antlike (comparative more antlike, superlative most antlike)

1. Resembling an ant. Often used specifically in reference to apparent size or significance.
   • 1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 147:

     On the flat behind the mill, dawn-rising Chinamen shogged with nimble bare feet under their yoke-linked watering-cans. These busy brethren, meeting sometimes on the same narrow track, would pause, ant-like, seemingly to dumbly regard one another and their burdens, then, still ant-like, pass silently to their work.

   • 2007 April 5, Bernard Holland, “The Met Shows Off Its Hits and Misses”, in New York Times‎:

     Standing, almost antlike, in the middle of Franco Zeffirelli ’s oversize set for “La Bohème,” however, he pushed uncomfortably.

• atinkle, kinetal