(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.
Squib
Definition:
(a.) A little pipe, or hollow cylinder of paper, filled with powder or combustible matter, to be thrown into the air while burning, so as to burst there with a crack.
(a.) A kind of slow match or safety fuse.
(a.) A sarcastic speech or publication; a petty lampoon; a brief, witty essay.
(a.) A writer of lampoons.
(a.) A paltry fellow.
(v. i.) To throw squibs; to utter sarcatic or severe reflections; to contend in petty dispute; as, to squib a little debate.
Example Sentences:
(1) It’s a damp squib, a bit of a nothing result,” a leading energy analyst said of a report that is widely expected to endorse provisional findings released in March , and recommend price controls on prepayment meters and setting up a customer database to help rival suppliers target customers stuck on expensive default tariffs.
(2) UK watchdog accused of bowing to pressure from 'big six' energy suppliers Read more However, it was not temporary precipitation that meant the CMA produced a damp squib but months of ferocious lobbying by the big six to ensure the industry is left largely in its existing state.
(3) Not only doesn’t Australia, as a nation, possess these protections, but the Coalition government is actively opposed to their implementation, while Labor squibbed the opportunity to do something about it in 2010.
(4) But their great offensive has been a damp squib, consisting mostly of lecturing greens that we can’t “turn off fossil fuels overnight”.
(5) Yet in the peace-giving west, the award remains significantly venerated – a testament, surely, to being a dynamite idea in principle (if you'll forgive the cliched reference to Alfred Nobel's other gift to the world ) but a mostly damp squib in practice.
(6) Gordon Brown's long awaited measures to help people struggling with soaring gas and electricity bills may have been derided as a bit of damp squib, but at least there are grants out there to help you insulate your home.
(7) 4.36pm BST Markets close European markets have nearly all closed up, except for the FTSE after a handful or blue chip firms went ex-dividend today FTSE 100 down 15 points (0.2%) at 6579 DAX up 16 points (0.2%) at 8432 CAC up 22 points (0.6%) at 4115 FTSE MIB up 83 points (0.5%) at 17463 IBEX up 31 points (0.4%) at 8783 4.00pm BST Michael Hewson, senior market analysts at CMC Markets, says the end of the EU recession is a damp squib which has shown up the disparity between France, Germany and the rest of the continent.
(8) Alternatively, there are fears that the authorities have left it too late for quantative easing and that it will prove another damp squib.
(9) "With the budget a damp squib, the economy faltering and the NHS reforms becoming more unpopular each and every day, marchers will have returned home determined to step up their democratic campaign against policies that neither government party put before the electorate at the last election."
(10) Paul Turner-Mitchell, a business rates expert, said the autumn statement had been “terrible” for retailers, with increasing signs that a review of the commercial property tax would prove a damp squib.
(11) Brown's closest ministerial ally, Ed Balls, said the email was a "damp squib" by a few disgruntled MPs and insisted that the cabinet was "absolutely united" behind Brown.But the number of cabinet voices emerging in support of Brown did not begin to rise to a chorus until early evening, among them two of the ministers tipped as possible successors to Brown – the home secretary, Alan Johnson, and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, who said today's call by rebels would be seen as a "temporary distraction" from the job of fighting the Conservatives and laying out future plans for the country.
(12) Ishaq Siddiqi , market strategist at ETX Capital, says shares have been trading in a 'narrow range' in European markets, ahead of tonight's fireworks (or damp squibs) from Ben Bernanke .
(13) Yet somehow her campaign launched as if a damp squib was the height of her ambition.
(14) According to Chris Prior: Whilst I'd probably get lynched for saying this within the confines of my office (working for a major bookmaker and surrounded by England fans): I can't help but think that another damp-squib of a 0-0 draw and subsequent exit would be nearly as funny as the fallout from England 2-3 Croatia, especially given the amount of trust and belief that people have invested in Fabio Capello this time around (and the usual argument of the over-inflated ego's of the overpaid players of the "EPL").
(15) Gillard described Abbott’s motion as a “damp squib” 4.02am GMT 'We will fight and fight and fight' Julia Gillard declares in the House of Representatives: We will fight and fight and fight and when the election is held in September we will prevail because the choice will be so clear and the right path for a stronger future will be so clear too.
(16) If one does in the coming hours, then what Brown's allies were happy to call a damp squib will spark back to potentially lethal life.
(17) The Clash, Give 'Em Enough Rope (Columbia, 1978) In an ideal world, the Clash's discography would hop from their eponymous debut to their masterpiece, London's Calling, but in between lurks this notorious damp squib.
(18) The Hindustan Times felt that "without a legally binding document, the summit turned into a damp squib".
(19) Brexit negotiator warns Donald Trump poses 'third threat' to EU Read more However, a senior Lib Dem source said there was “no chance” of getting any substantial amendments passed with cross-party support and the debate was likely to be a “damp squib”.
(20) Europe's day of protest is intended as a show of union power staging a comeback, but may prove a noisy damp squib, a demonstration of angry impotence.