petite

Etymology

Borrowed from French petite f, feminine of petit m (“small, little”).

adj

1. (especially of a woman) fairly short and of slim build.
2. (clothing) of small size.
3. Small, little; insignificant; petty.
   The Earth, the Sun, and Stars, what things are they in nature? are they petite things not worth our notice, or grand and worthy of consideration? 1662, Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Systems of the World (Dialogue Two)

noun

1. (genetics) A mutant first discovered in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, forming small colonies when grown in the presence of fermentable carbon sources such as glucose.
   The primary structure of the mitochondrial genomes of these petites had been previously determined […] 2005, Giorgio Bernardi, Structural and Evolutionary Genomics, page 39