ankle biter

-A small child. Also applied to small dogs.

I first came across this phrase in an episode of full house uttered by the extremely delectable john stamos in reference to his on screen neice. Decided to do a little research on this phrase and came up with this :

Though this phrase has a contemporary feel, it was first recorded in the mid-19th century.

Harper's Magazine, September 1850, had the sentence:
"And how are you, John? and how's Molly, and all the little ankle-biters?"

The phrase then seemed to have disappeared from sight for over 100 years. It isn't clear whether the Harper's citation was a one-off usage and the phrase originated later independently. It's possible that it stayed alive as un-recorded slang but, even if it did stay in the language from 1850 onward, printed citations appear to be in limbo until Iona and Peter Opie's The lore and language of schoolchildren, 1959:

"A chap who has got duck's disease is most often labelled 'Tich’ in a friendly manner, or '‘squirt’ or 'little squirt’ in a less friendly manner. Alternatively: ankle biter, dolly mixture [etc.]."

Its said to be of Australian origin in many phrase lists, due to the way it sounds despite not having any citations in print.

The term ankle biter also seems to have some relevance in the stock market. It means stock issues that have market capitalization less than 500 million also known as "small cap" stocks.

To quote verbatim from the website:

"These issues can appear to be more speculative than stocks with high market capitalization. However, smaller issues often have great growth potential and tend to outperform larger market capitalization stocks. Small cap stocks are often biting at the ankles of the larger cap stocks and will one day - through capitalization growth - move up into the larger market capitalizations, as a child grows into adulthood."

Sources: http://www.phrases.org.uk/ http://www.investopedia.com/

Picture: Google Images