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
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for piffling
Adjective
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Howe used four different left-backs last term, mainly fielding Dan Burn there (a nominal centre-back at 6ft 7in/201cm), while Newcastle were the most one-sided team in the league for crosses — over 60 per cent came from the right.—
Liam Tharme,
The Athletic,
24 Feb. 2025 -
Out of all of the foreign investment sources that have pumped cash into South Florida real estate, financial institutions, and new businesses over the years, Saudi Arabia is a nation that at best has a nominal presence in the region.—
David Lyons,
Sun Sentinel,
23 Feb. 2025
Adjective
-
Sugarcane honey is a concentrated form of sugarcane juice that has a slight licorice taste and a touch of bitterness.—
Joseph V Micallef,
Forbes,
8 Mar. 2025
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Freud’s notion of remembering, the inexact reiteration of what came before, is where creativity emerges—that slight drift from the original that lets something unlikely slip in.—
Namwali Serpell,
The New Yorker,
8 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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But being able to distinguish when things are challenging versus straight-up unhealthy can keep you from spiraling into petty drama and sneaky backstabbing.—
Jenna Ryu,
SELF,
3 Mar. 2025
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On the page, Serafina is an archetypical Williams heroine — a woman who feels the world too deeply and is therefore brutalized by its harsh truths and petty cruelties (e.g. Maggie the Cat, Blanche DuBois, Amanda Wingfield).—
EW Staff,
EW.com,
2 Mar. 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
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The cost to find these answers, even in the near term, is relatively trifling.—
Phil Plait,
Scientific American,
30 Oct. 2023
Adjective
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My worst days were spent being transported to the courtroom shackled and isolated in a tiny cage, waiting to be summoned into trial.—
James L. Dold,
Baltimore Sun,
5 Mar. 2025
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Acupuncture and the tiny sugar pellets of homeopathy.—
Hazlitt,
Hazlitt,
5 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
Given this, there is no straightforward way to understand what a model is doing on an intuitive level, as from our perspective running inference on a model is nothing more than executing trillions of trivial operations such as addition and multiplication.—
Rahul Gudise,
Forbes,
7 Mar. 2025
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And figuring out that amount was not a trivial task.—
Jayson Stewart,
IEEE Spectrum,
5 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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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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Cite this Entry
“Piffling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/piffling. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.
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