تنبال

Where it comes from

An augmentative pattern generally standing for someone who is sedulous in a business, from نَبُلَ (nabula, “to be noble, to be of high birth, to be endowed with skill”). The exact views on midgets in the ancient Near East leave little trace, but rather than being related to disability, or explained as a consequence of parental sin, by which standpoints the Jewish religion distinguished itself, they could be connected even to the divine, see for instance in the Egyptian pantheon the craftsman Ptaḥ and the dwarf-figurine nmw associated with him, and indeed even in the Germanic folklore dwarves decidedly were skilled craftsmen.