1 n. — Sports, Hockey
a division or level of youth sports, usually ages 16-17; often in a compound, as in midget league.
Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Midget has been appropriated for its use to denote something small to refer to a youth sports age group. It is also in use in the US. It is possible that midget in the US used to refer to the youngest category of players, as W-3 describes it as "for children who are usu. the youngest eligible to belong or the smallest or lightest eligible to participate" (see W-3, s.v. "midget" (2.b)), but this is no longer the case. In the hockey context, the term carries cultural salience, like many other hockey terms. In this case, salience derives from the importance of this age group as usually the make or break towards an NHL career, which is still the goal of disproportionally many competitive youth hockey players in Canada (see Hockey Canada reference).
See also COD-2, s.v. "midget" (3a), which is marked "Cdn", and OED-3, s.v. "midget" (B2), which is marked "N. Amer. (chiefly Canad.)".