as in nominal
so small or unimportant as to warrant little or no attention
from his perspective as a billionaire, what the governor got paid was a piffling amount
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Examples Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for piffling
Adjective
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The object of their largesse was an obscure nonprofit called the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation which, for the better part of two decades, had quietly helped firefighters by raising funds for equipment — often things as nominal as gloves and flashlights — not covered in the city budget.—
David Wharton,
Los Angeles Times,
20 Jan. 2025 -
Ever since, however, TCU has started three wings alongside Van Lith and Sedona Prince, once again making the fifth-year senior the nominal point guard.—
Sabreena Merchant,
The Athletic,
20 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
The snow started falling Sunday afternoon, with a slight mix of hail.—
Joseph Wilkinson,
New York Daily News,
19 Jan. 2025
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That slight warming trend is expected to continue Friday, when high temperatures reach the upper 30s, with lows in the upper teens.—
Matt Hubbard,
Baltimore Sun,
19 Jan. 2025
Adjective
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But the smoke is still rising, and petty partisanship is a distraction and disservice at the moment, given all that’s been lost, and all the hard work of moving forward.—
Steve Lopez,
Los Angeles Times,
10 Jan. 2025
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In an era of steadily declining trust in media, the dry formalities of a legal template provide not only an imprimatur of institutional credibility, but also the freedom to go into extreme amounts of detail without seeming petty, tedious or self-indulgent.—
Eleanor Hawkins,
Axios,
9 Jan. 2025
Adjective
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Then, the pandemic reduced the schedule to 60 games and Eddie got a piddling 37%.—
Star Tribune,
Star Tribune,
3 Dec. 2020
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Millions of additional claims are expected to stream in from around the country over the coming weeks, while hiring remains piddling.—
Patricia Cohen,
New York Times,
23 Apr. 2020
Adjective
-
And yet the movie’s insularity feels trifling and empty.—
David Rooney,
The Hollywood Reporter,
17 Feb. 2024
-
The cost to find these answers, even in the near term, is relatively trifling.—
Phil Plait,
Scientific American,
30 Oct. 2023
Adjective
-
Those in-the-moment progressions can feel tiny and barely perceptible from one session to the next.—
Cindy Kuzma,
SELF,
16 Jan. 2025
-
Despite their immense size, these gentle giants are filter feeders, primarily consuming plankton, small fish, and other tiny organisms by swimming with their mouths open to filter food from the water.—
Melissa Cristina Marquez,
Forbes,
16 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
Out of a trivial tension, an intimate and unsettling face-to-face confrontation suddenly arises.—
Zac Ntim,
Deadline,
16 Jan. 2025
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Compared with all that has been lost here in L.A., the devastation of Runyon Canyon and other hiking trails is trivial.—
Andrew Moseman,
The Atlantic,
15 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
That pipeline, now at the heart of the NS2 dispute, still carries Russian gas to Germany, yielding between $2 billion and $3 billion in annual transit fees for Ukraine – not an inconsiderable amount for an economy whose total gross domestic product was $154 billion in 2020.—
Fred Weir,
The Christian Science Monitor,
5 Aug. 2021
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For even very good students who can afford the not inconsiderable tuition, deciding which campuses to list on the UC application — each costs $70 — is less about personal preference and more about figuring out which one offers any hope of acceptance.—
Los Angeles Times,
Los Angeles Times,
14 Apr. 2021
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Thesaurus Entries Near piffling
Cite this Entry
“Piffling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/piffling. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.
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