See, this is where I interpret the English differently from you. I interpret the list of "or"s as examples of different ways of looking at the same thing (same with "adds a meaning of smallness and/or lack of importance"). Like how {ghoS} can mean "approach" or "go away from" or "proceed" or "come" or "follow (a course)" depending on the context, or {-Daj} can mean "his" or "her" or "its". For me, {-Hom} and {-'a'} mean all the things listed, with some objects leaning more toward one of the meanings than the other depending on context, but when I read a word like {naQHom} I think of it as a {naQ} that can be smaller, and/or less important, and/or less powerful. It can be one, it can be all. 

Based on the examples in TKD, and KGTs "meaning of smallness", it seems like if there is just a change in size, then the change is more than what {tIn/mach} can do by themselves. The {tajHom} on a {Daqtagh} aren't just small knives, they are tiny mini-blades. {SuSHom} is a tiny "wisp of air". {woQ'a'} is "ultimate power".

Ultimately, this is my point: {-Hom} doesn't equal {mach}, and {-'a'} doesn't equal {tIn}, there is much more to the suffixes than those two words. 

Agreed about the or. When Okrand lists meanings like that, he's not giving you a menu from which you make a single selection; he's trying to transmit the gist. The Klingon suffix -Hom has just one meaning: it's the concept embodied in the meshing of the ideas of smallness, lack of importance, and lack of power. The single idea that covers all those things is -Hom. It's only the fact that we don't have a common word for it in English — or German, so far as I know — that makes it confusing.

So no matter how long you hold a shrink ray on me, I never become a loDHom, only a loD mach, or now, if you keep going, a loD nu'.

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SuStel
http://trimboli.name