A small breed of chicken, typically a miniature version of a standard chicken breed; also used as an adjective meaning small or undersized.
From Bantam, a city in Indonesia (now Banten), famous for exporting these tiny chicken breeds to Europe in the 1600s-1700s.
When Dutch traders brought tiny chickens from Bantam, Indonesia to Europe, they named them after the port city — now 'banty' has become a general English word for anything unusually small, and the original Indonesian city barely remembers its chicken legacy.
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