- petty
- petty, puny, trivial, trifling, paltry, measly, picayunish, picayune mean little and insignificant, often contemptibly so.Something is petty which by comparison with other things the same in kind but different in size, importance, gravity, or moment is among the smallest or least important{
a petty interest
}{a petty prince
}{giants beside whom we seem petty— Sinclair Lewis
}{Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things hateful— Keats
}The word often connotes small-mindedness{[i]petty gossip
}{explaining that only the petty vengeance of men who hated Roosevelt had produced the law that prohibited ... a third term— Michener
}{divine inhabitants of a world apart, for whom nothing sordid, nothing petty, and nothing painful had any existence— Sackville— West
}Something is puny which is so small or slight as to seem impotent, feeble, or completely without vitality{none of your thin, puny, yellow, hectic figures, exhausted with abstinence and hard study— Smollett
}{one no sooner grasps the bigness of the world's work than one's own effort seems puny and contemptible— J. R. Green
}Something is trivial which seems petty and commonplace and scarcely worthy of special consideration or notice{that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid— Wilde
}{he regarded no task as too humble for him to undertake, nor so trivial that it was not worth his while to do it well— Huxley
}The term is often applied to persons, minds, or activities which reveal engrossment in trivial affairs or a lack of serious or profound interests{she knew him for a philanderer, a trivial taster in love and life— Rose Macaulay
}{the incessant hurry and trivial activity of daily life— Eliot
}Something is trifling which is so small as to have little if any value or significance{our ordinary distinctions become so trifling, so impalpable— Hawthorne
}{a considerable sum was paid to Egmont and a trifling one to the Prince— Motley
}Something is paltry which is ridiculously or contemptibly small in comparison especially to what it should be{a paltry allowance
}{our little ambitions, our paltry joys— Benson
}{the paltry prize is hardly worth the cost— Byron
}Something is measly which is contemptibly small (as in size or quantity) or petty{a measly portion of pie
}{snatch at a little measly advantage and miss the big one— Anderson
}Something is picayunish or picayune which is insignificant in its possibilities or accomplishments or hopelessly narrow in outlook or interests{a picayunish policy
}{a lifetime of picayunish drudgery in the company of louts— H. L. Davis
}{the obvious futility, the picayune, question-begging character, of such ethical analyses— Asher Moore
}{a picayune congressman
}Analogous words: *small, little, diminutive, minuteAntonyms: important, momentous: gross
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
