The phrase "make himself small" is correct and usable in written English.
It is typically used to describe someone making themselves less noticeable, either physically or figuratively. For example, "The shy boy tried to make himself small at the party."
He makes himself small in the doorway, as small as he can, and stands very still.
But there was pain as he landed awkwardly after jumping for a lob that he could not reach, and for anybody watching, there was the urge to twist away as the knee buckled and Philippoussis, a big Australian, tumbled onto the court and made himself small, curling into a compromising position.
Instead of focusing on his imprisonment and his liberation, he made himself small and trusted his people with the truth.
He crouched low, making himself smaller than his 5-foot-10 frame, collected a pass, and snapped the puck into the Devils' net all in one moment.
But the plain fact is that no Democrat (not Mr Gore or Bill Bradley or Bob Kerrey, or those other time-worn names with a toe in the water) impresses as much as the man who, by his own folly, has deliberately made himself smaller than he should be.Republicans on the rocksIn contrast to the Democrats, how do the Republicans stand?
He made himself bigger than he was for this Nazi, and then he made himself smaller than he was for the trial.
He has the wind in his sails now, which permits him to act modest and to make himself as small as possible.
Central to this strategy was focusing on the slowness of the US economic recovery and to make himself as small a target as possible, offering little in the way of policy detail.
It's true that a rabbit that is exhibiting submissive behavior will make himself as small as possible by crouching and tucking his head down.
