What's the difference between nonentity and paltry?

Nonentity


Definition:

  • (n.) A thing not existing.
  • (n.) Nonexistence; the negation of being.
  • (n.) A person or thing of little or no account.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A nonentity introduces me to a moderately talented guitarist named Johnny Marr who is friends with a useless drummer called Mike Joyce and a bassist whose name I can't remember.
  • (2) But then personne turned out to be called Joseph Laniel, a nonentity who was prime minister from June 1953 to June 1954.
  • (3) As well as providing an excuse for Corbyn to promote nonentities, refusal denies senior MPs a ready-made platform from which to express their dissent.” The party reported that a further 15,000 people had joined the party since Corbyn’s election on Saturday.
  • (4) "The prime minister is a nonentity, except as the appointee of Asif Ali Zardari."
  • (5) As merely the king-in-waiting he is a constitutional nonentity.
  • (6) Apple once held 18 per cent of the computing market, but years of clumsy marketing, bungled relationships with developers, and unruly product lines left it almost a nonentity: a mere 3 per cent of the computing population used Macs prior to the iMac.
  • (7) Crushing the rival bids of political nonentities like Dmitry Medvedev is child's play for him.
  • (8) In the span of a year he burnt bridges with both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Mavericks, while becoming something of a nonentity on the court.
  • (9) Yet again, this spoiled nonentity is cosseted by his party: though he stands as an “independent”, the Conservatives will try to save his bacon by setting no candidate against him, to avoid splitting their vote.
  • (10) Unlike in France or Germany, engineers are a bit of a nonentity here.
  • (11) In Stamford Way, he repeatedly attacks Clegg as a nonentity whose only claim to fame is his U-turn over student tuition fees – " a protoplasmic, amoebic, vacillating, jelly of indecision".
  • (12) He said the victims were informed that their new employer was a nonentity and that they had been ripped off on arrival at what they expected to be their first day of work.
  • (13) Vice-president Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, a Saleh appointee and a former military man from the south who is something of a nonentity, has temporarily taken charge as required by the constitution .
  • (14) The word "spasm" has been purposefully omitted as it is essentially a nonentity in vascular trauma.
  • (15) As well as providing an excuse for Corbyn to promote nonentities, refusal denies senior MPs a ready-made platform from which to express their dissent.
  • (16) A nervous nation, unsure what it has done to itself, is subject to the tedious, vituperative comments from one Conservative nonentity about another.
  • (17) Its outrage was directed at the bland evil of war, the US Army Air Force (USAAF), and the bureaucratic scheming of military nonentities.

Paltry


Definition:

  • (superl.) Mean; vile; worthless; despicable; contemptible; pitiful; trifling; as, a paltry excuse; paltry gold.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) She says that the spread of insecure, short-term contracts and part-time work, together with benefits cuts and paltry wage growth, have meant that many people in work are struggling to make ends meet.
  • (2) Let’s leave that discussion to another day, but imagine a combination of the two – sort of Transformers meets Ex Machina – in which a race of giant sexy robots battles it out with another race of really mean giant sexy robots while paltry human beings look on in awe, and teenage boys (and girls) experience incredibly conflicting and disturbing sensual awakenings in the front row of the Beckenham Odeon.
  • (3) Only Orange's pay monthly deals come with Wi-Fi access and they only include a paltry 750MB of Wi-Fi browsing – again through BT Openzone's network of hotspots.
  • (4) In 2010 Bedder 6 paid out total dividends of £1.68m — which saw Clarkson pocket a comparatively paltry £850,000 when his share is calculated and his annual service payment is added in — meaning his income from Bedder 6 has almost tripled year on year.
  • (5) A paltry 50g of brown rice takes up over a third of your daily calorie count.
  • (6) By his own lofty standards Cavendish's return of two stage wins from this year's Tour has been paltry and myriad signs of hitherto unseen fallibility, a team that is clearly not good enough to work in his service and suggestions that his star is on the wane will leave him with much to ponder.
  • (7) If the recession results in interest rates remaining low for years, as many in the City are now predicting, then annuity rates will also remain at paltry levels.
  • (8) Frontex’s annual budget is a paltry €90m (£65m).
  • (9) Russia and China , meanwhile, have contributed a paltry $17.8 million and $1.2 million, respectively.
  • (10) It is the result of rejecting the world of public disengagement and laissez faire that delivered one paltry gold medal in Atlanta just 16 years ago.
  • (11) The value has now decreased slightly and their share probably sits at a paltry $10m.
  • (12) In 1959, US intelligence estimates suggested that the USSR would be in possession of between 1,000 and 1,500 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) compared to America’s paltry 100.
  • (13) Co-operative customer #3 is making do with a paltry state pension, subsidising the cost of groceries with a fortnightly package from the local food bank and unable to afford energy bills.
  • (14) The food industry spends over £1bn a year on marketing in the UK, compared with the paltry £14m spent on the government's anti-obesity campaign.
  • (15) The Italians are earning paltry returns from knocking out white goods in competition with the Chinese and Koreans.
  • (16) A paltry £1,000 for each marginal Labour candidate hardly buys a poster site.
  • (17) The sums are so paltry that the animus seems deliberate.
  • (18) As he itemises the contents of the pawnbroker's shop ("a few old China cups; some modern vases, adorned with paltry paintings of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish guitars; or a party of boors carousing: each boor with one leg painfully elevated in the air by way of expressing his perfect freedom and gaiety …") you sense that Dickens barely knows how to stop.
  • (19) Yet he went on to pretend a paltry array of stimuli will fix the problem: he cannot possibly believe that loose change from the petty cash will arrest the plunge in employment and growth.
  • (20) Growth for the UK in 2012 will be a paltry 0.6%, the IMF says.