What's the difference between paltry and trivial?

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.

Trivial


Definition:

  • (n.) One of the three liberal arts forming the trivium.
  • (a.) Found anywhere; common.
  • (a.) Ordinary; commonplace; trifling; vulgar.
  • (a.) Of little worth or importance; inconsiderable; trifling; petty; paltry; as, a trivial subject or affair.
  • (a.) Of or pertaining to the trivium.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The case of a 32-year-old man who suffered a blow to his left supraorbital region and eyebrow in an automatic closing door is reported to draw attention to the uncommon but trivial nature of this injury which may result in profound visual loss.
  • (2) Governmental regulations, requirements, and standards have improved the quality of many laboratories' work, but also result in greatly increased costs, excesses of often trivial procedures, and diversion of trained manpower from clinical service to regulatory procedures, with a resulting increase in manpower needs.
  • (3) Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter.
  • (4) While they might technically have been denied a majority in that scenario, making up the two missing seats would have been trivial.
  • (5) We have shown that patients with chronic airflow obstruction (CAO) complain of disabling dyspnea when performing seemingly trivial tasks with unsupported arms.
  • (6) Given the documented sensitivity of chest radiography in this respect, we conclude that any increase in extravascular lung water during exercise must be trivial.
  • (7) schizophrenia), the underestimation of prevalence by the proband method may be non-trivial.
  • (8) They range from relatively trivial conditions such as oral and genital thrush to fatal, systemic superinfections in patients who are already seriously ill with other diseases.
  • (9) Snoring usually is trivial and unimportant, but it can turn into a social or medical problem.
  • (10) To the sensitization and the sensitine production the following type strains (Trudeau Institute Saranac Lake) were used: M. avium, M. borstelense, M.chelonei, M. flavescens, M. fortuitum, M. gastri, M. gordonae, M.kansaii, M. marinum, M nonchromogenicum, M. phlei, M. scrofulaceum, M. smegmatis, M. terrae, M. triviale and M. bovis strain Vallee as well as M. intracellulare serotyp Davis ATCC 23435.
  • (11) Cardiovascular sequelae were generally trivial at all doses.
  • (12) Previous studies have indicated that suppression is mediated by "null cells" similar to natural suppressor (NS) cells (1), and have ruled out several possible trivial explanations for the suppressive effect.
  • (13) Since the biosynthetic route is similar to that of lipoxin A4 and lipoxin B4, we suggest the trivial names lipoxin C4, D4 and E4.
  • (14) This polysaccharide has been given the trivial name marginalan.
  • (15) Rupture of the bridging veins or the intratumoral abnormal vessels due to twisting of the brain from trivial head trauma or without trauma might produce subdural hematoma.
  • (16) Five patients had normal intracardiac hemodynamic values, 2 had trivial atrioventricular valve regurgitation and 1 patient had trivial pulmonary ventricular outflow tract obstruction.
  • (17) Six weeks later, two weeks after a trivial trauma with hyperextension of the shoulder joint, it was found that the catheter had broken and its tip portion had embolized into the pulmonary artery: it was retrieved without difficulty via the femoral vein.
  • (18) The results indicate that dichromatic and trichromatic monkeys differ only trivially on tests where performance is based on the contributions of non-opponent mechanisms, that the contribution of spectrally opponent mechanisms to the "brightness signal" is very similar in trichromatic and dichromatic monkeys, and that in increment-threshold discriminations where there are both chromaticity and luminance cues some test wavelengths yield superior performance for trichromats while others appear to favor the dichromat.
  • (19) Thus, the same tribunal that regularly consigns ordinary, powerless Americans to prison for decades for even trivial offenses yet again acts to protect the most powerful actors from any consequences for serious crimes: that is the US justice system in a nutshell.
  • (20) The appetite was selective as shown by the fact that when, after depletion, 0.34 M-CaCl2 was offered (which is equiosmotic to 3% NaCl) pigeons took just a trivial amount of it.