(superl.) Little; trifling; inconsiderable; also, inferior; subordinate; as, a petty fault; a petty prince.
Example Sentences:
(1) The only thing the media will talk about in the hours and days after the debate will be Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the results of the election, making him appear small, petty and conspiratorial.
(2) I realize it’s petty, but it’s like the Michael Bolton thing from Office Space.
(3) Winston Churchill, when he was offered the role of minister of the local government board in 1906, commented: "There is no place more laborious, more anxious, more thankless, more cloaked with petty and even squalid detail, more full of hopeless and insoluble difficulties."
(4) Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.
(5) We took all the feedback from users and put pencil to paper to create our consumer 3D printer built for speed and ease of use,” said Pettis.
(6) Facebook Twitter Pinterest China dismisses Trump call with Taiwan as ‘small trick’ However, Beijing’s public response has so far been measured, with the foreign ministry lodging a “solemn representation” with Washington and the foreign minister, Wang Yi, downplaying the development as “a petty move” by Taiwan.
(7) She won’t apologize for whatever makes the New York Times treat her with middle-school levels of petty scorn .
(8) The president should have directed the Justice Department to stop taking stupid points and petty appeals.” One reason the Justice Department pursued the habeas cases so hard was its client: the Pentagon.
(9) As the locus of many migrants' investments, the village of Los Pinos has experienced a modest growth in the number of full-time jobs paying somewhat above the minimum urban wage and in a variety of petty entrepreneurial activities depending heavily on the patronage of migrant households, themselves heavily subsidized by remittances.
(10) Indeed watching the prime minister singling out unemployed youngsters for uniquely punitive measures while pretending it is for their own good, cheered on by a gang of braying chums, it looks less like the behaviour of a national statesman and more like the petty vindictiveness of a schoolyard bully.
(11) Some are retired, others straddle the uncertain worlds of petty trading, agriculture and seasonal migrant labour.
(12) Not long ago, the mecca of American tourism was populated by sex workers, transvestites, drug addicts and petty criminals, rather than middle-class tourists.
(13) All the petty differences that divide us seem to melt away.
(14) Abdeslam relied on a large network of friends and relatives that already existed for drug dealing and petty crime to keep him in hiding,” Belgium’s federal prosecutor, Frederic Van Leeuw, told Belgian public broadcaster RTBF.
(15) Another said: "The problem with PMQs isn't so much that it's shouty but that the so-called pinnacle of political debate in this country is two men trading petty insults and making nasty jokes about the other while the rest of parliament boos and cheers behind them.
(16) They included a former monk, two young men with learning disabilities, a handful of petty criminals and a teacher at a private school in Paris who was "disappeared" by another republican group, the INLA.
(17) The study was conducted in the three contiguous counties of Johnson, Lafayette and Pettis in west central Missouri.
(18) Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 Lunar Module Pilot, said that walking on the Moon gives you an instant global consciousness, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it, that international politics look so petty.
(19) It also found that some children were put into care without lawful basis, including for petty theft and for being rude.
(20) Parents are required to bring up children responsibly, while living in a form of servitude to licensed employers and petty line managers, often themselves at risk of returning to zero-hours.
Puny
Definition:
(superl.) Imperfectly developed in size or vigor; small and feeble; inferior; petty.
(n.) A youth; a novice.
Example Sentences:
(1) She puts much of the ongoing disaster down to what she calls "a severe case of management capture", the puny powers possessed by the Co-op's members to hold anyone at the top to account, and its hopelessly complicated structure.
(2) He was so puny, not like the macho pictures you see of him riding a horse bareback, or fishing barechested," she said.
(3) When they first encounter their "admirer and pupil Zola" he strikes them as a "worn-out Normalien, at once sturdy and puny" but with "a vibrant note of pungent determination and furious energy".
(4) Then again, this is the Labour party we are talking about, and the policies supposed to lead us there are, so far, distinctly puny.
(5) As for forcing people to move, the new tax would be puny compared with the rates.
(6) Ministers keep boasting of the puny £100m transitional fund, supposed to tide charities over, but to what?
(7) (I say they, not we, because the Guardian is always a puny counterweight to these massed ranks on the right).
(8) Roosevelt's programme to rebuild war-torn Europe cost around 5% of US GDP – the lofty comparison only underlines the puniness of the euro version and elicits a snort of derision from newsrooms and trading floors across Europe.
(9) Abbott said the declaration of a caliphate showed that “Islamic State wants to emulate Mohammed whose early campaigns would have looked just as puny to the great powers of his day”.
(10) Those powers are puny compared to the ones they have willingly given away.
(11) When the American Film Institute bestowed the Lifetime Achievement Award upon Lean in 1990 (he made the trip to LA despite failing health), Spielberg paid tribute from the stage, saying of Lawrence...: 'It made me feel puny.
(12) Such abilities could transform our puny electronic equipment into a new generation of micro-scale devices.
(13) In ways that are measurable on a daily basis the post of mayor, directly accountable to the electorate, has improved the quality of life for Londoners, even if in its early phase it had puny powers and deserves more now.
(14) Donald Trump barely capable of squeezing wealth on to puny official form On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump announced that he had filed a personal financial disclosure with the Federal Election Commission, the last step needed to secure his presence on stage in the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland on 6 August.
(15) Completely untroubled by United's puny attacking efforts after the opening 15 minutes, Barcelona kept swarming forward.
(16) But in 1908 their fortunes were on the up: Sydney had just got Charlie his break with the famous Fred Karno company and despite the impressario’s doubts about the “pale, puny, sullen-looking youngster”, he was an instant hit with audiences.
(17) So, too, have regional broadcasters whose vast workforces can dwarf their puny audience shares.
(18) The team's puny total of 15 Premier League goals should alarm City [West Brom and Blackpool have both scored more] and in the long term there must be an increased verve if they are to grasp some silverware.
(19) They have resorted to denial and to aligning themselves with the puny flag-waving of the Europhobes, who were out in force in this week's rebellion against David Cameron , hardly an arch federast.
(20) It had lost most of its territory in France and, in comparison to bold and dynamic Spain, was decidedly puny.