Pronunciations (2)
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/ˈpɪdəlɪŋ/
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ˈpɪdəlɪŋ
Adjective
Insignificant, negligible, paltry, trivial, useless.
Usage- not-comparable
- Examples
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After all the work I'd done, he gave me a piddling amount of money.
the ignoble hucksterage of piddling tithes
More examples (2)
Los Angeles would still be a piddling little town in a desert if it weren’t for Sierra snowmelt and city officials crafty enough to snooker eastern California farmers out of their water rights.
[…]last month the Pentagon spent $400mn to take a 15 per cent stake in MP Materials, a Nevada-based group that aims to be “a fully integrated rare earths producer”. That is a piddling sum.
Adjective
(informal) small and of little importance
- Examples
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a fiddling sum of money
a footling gesture
More examples (6)
our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war
a little (or small) matter
a dispute over niggling details
limited to petty enterprises
piffling efforts
giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction