as in nominal
so small or unimportant as to warrant little or no attention
there's only a piddly difference in price between the two paintings, so take whichever you prefer
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
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Recent Examples of piddly
This stole the top spot from 1993, with its piddly 76 days over 100.
—
Hayleigh Evans, The Arizona Republic, 21 Dec. 2024
Adding an additional 23,000 km is really a piddly amount.
—Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 21 Sep. 2010
Online savings accounts have proliferated in recent years, offering higher yields than the piddly rates attached to ordinary savings accounts, which are less than 0.1%, on average.
—Ryan Dezember, WSJ, 11 Nov. 2022
Byrne is still a United States congressman and that’s no piddly thing.
—Kyle Whitmire, al, 7 Nov. 2019
This information isn't written in the controller's piddly instruction manual.
—Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 16 Nov. 2018
After Kilauea's 1924 summit explosions, the volcano entered a decade of piddly rumblings, followed by 18 years of silence.
—Sophia Yan and Malcolm Ritter, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 June 2018
But sometimes self-denial is its own form of power, as you are no doubt noticing, crammed into that piddly apartment.
—Helaine Olen, Slate Magazine, 25 Jan. 2017
Hayleigh Evans, The Arizona Republic, 21 Dec. 2024
Adding an additional 23,000 km is really a piddly amount.
—Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 21 Sep. 2010
Online savings accounts have proliferated in recent years, offering higher yields than the piddly rates attached to ordinary savings accounts, which are less than 0.1%, on average.
—Ryan Dezember, WSJ, 11 Nov. 2022
Byrne is still a United States congressman and that’s no piddly thing.
—Kyle Whitmire, al, 7 Nov. 2019
This information isn't written in the controller's piddly instruction manual.
—Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 16 Nov. 2018
After Kilauea's 1924 summit explosions, the volcano entered a decade of piddly rumblings, followed by 18 years of silence.
—Sophia Yan and Malcolm Ritter, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 June 2018
But sometimes self-denial is its own form of power, as you are no doubt noticing, crammed into that piddly apartment.
—Helaine Olen, Slate Magazine, 25 Jan. 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for piddly
Adjective
-
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
-
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
-
The snow started falling Sunday afternoon, with a slight mix of hail.—
Joseph Wilkinson,
New York Daily News,
19 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
For what’s known as PM2.5 pollution, or tiny inhalable particles of smoke and dust, a PurpleAir sensor located south of Los Angeles International Airport simultaneously returned on Monday an air quality index of 28 on AirNow’s website, 20 on WatchDuty, and 5 on PurpleAir’s official page.—
Paresh Dave,
WIRED,
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
-
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
-
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
-
Then, the pandemic reduced the schedule to 60 games and Eddie got a piddling 37%.—
Star Tribune,
Star Tribune,
3 Dec. 2020
-
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
-
The symbolism of having the speech in a space desecrated by a small but not insignificant number of Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, has been lost on nobody.—
Daniel Fienberg,
The Hollywood Reporter,
20 Jan. 2025
-
But prosecutor Scheller argued that the earlier injury was insignificant.—
Erin Moriarty,
CBS News,
18 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
Out of a trivial tension, an intimate and unsettling face-to-face confrontation suddenly arises.—
Zac Ntim,
Deadline,
16 Jan. 2025
-
Meanwhile, a small (but not trivial) minority of Republican spending hawks has been complaining that current levels of military spending are too high.—
Matthew Yglesias,
Twin Cities,
15 Jan. 2025
Adjective
-
Tinder was still in its infancy, a paltry 11 percent of Americans had tried online dating, and the idea of falling for an artificial intelligence companion would have been seen as weird, sad or some combination of the two.—
Gina Cherelus,
New York Times,
16 Jan. 2025
-
This season, Hill averaged 15.8 PPR PTS in the 10 full games logged by Tua and had a paltry 8.6 mark in the seven contests in which Thompson or Tyler Huntley played.—
Brandon Funston,
The Athletic,
10 Jan. 2025
Thesaurus Entries Near piddly
Cite this Entry
“Piddly.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/piddly. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025.
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