(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.
Unimportant
Definition:
Example Sentences:
(1) The amount of EB or progesterone injected seemed unimportant but, in either case, had to be given within a limited diurnal period of sensitivity.
(2) For example, we hypothesize that competition can be unimportant even if it is very intense: no such hypothesis is possible unless importance is distinguished from intensity.
(3) A comparison of the time course of this time-locked response with that of the kernel prediction indicated that nonlinear temporal effects of order higher than two are unimportant.
(4) Nucleotide pyrophosphatases seem to play an unimportant role in guanylyl imidodiphosphate conversion, while alkaline phosphatase is possibly of more importance.
(5) Moreover, M1-muscarinic receptors appear to be relatively unimportant in mediating the effects of carbachol on short circuit current (ISC).
(6) Cl measured with each method exceeded Crs (p less than .05), but the magnitude was clinically unimportant.
(7) According to these results the acetylator phenotype seems to be an unimportant factor in therapy with dihydralazine.
(8) Snoring usually is trivial and unimportant, but it can turn into a social or medical problem.
(9) Analysis of this time delay as a function of the factor Xa concentration indicates that the gain of the feedback loop of factor V activation by thrombin is so high that the contribution of factor V activation by factor Xa is relatively unimportant for factor Xa concentrations in the nanomolar range.
(10) This is unusual, although clinically unimportant muscle involvement in trypanosomiasis has been described.
(11) But he is warm and sharp, and the punchlines begin to feel unimportant when the journey there is so much fun.
(12) Since this phenomenon is associated with high concentrations of contrast media in nonflowing blood, the high shear rate in arteries and arterioles make it unimportant in the in vivo situation.
(13) Didn't they realise how unimportant it all was, compared with what we'd been through?"
(14) The contribution made by cytotoxicity to the overall antiviral effect (measured by 24 h yield) was negligible in Flow 2002 cells, and was relatively unimportant in BHK cells.
(15) Safety was very satisfactory: patients complained only rarely of trivial and clinically unimportant side effects; no variations in laboratory tests were noted.
(16) Our results suggest that the osmotic and free-radical scavenging properties of hexoses are relatively unimportant in relation to their antiarrhythmic effects.
(17) Items loading on the first three factors were thought to be generally important, and those on the last three relatively unimportant.
(18) The basis of the program is a valid 'partial' statistical description of the EEG; that description is then used to produce a digital representation of a signal which, if plotted sequentially, might or might not by chance resemble an EEG, that is unimportant.
(19) The involvement of General Practitioners in the care of epilepsy was found to be small, but not unimportant.
(20) Pocket elimination by the use of surgical procedures (gingivectomy, flap operation with bone surgery) may be preferred in regions of the mouth where the aesthetic result is unimportant and where the removal of alveolar bone does not jeopardize the periodontal support of neighbouring teeth.