Inferior - worthless

Usage examples of tinpot.

John Major had just been speaking about the need to stand up to aggression and tinpot despots wherever they reared their heads.

Eventually the forty-nine states became little more than a vast plantation whose people worked overtime to feed a hungry world, an arms factory to supply the tinpot dictators who used American weapons mainly against their own people, and a bank to finance the extravagances of foreign tyrants who ruled the masses.

What, d'you think I'm nobody, to be railroaded by some tinpot foreign court on a trumped-up charge?

Everyone wanted to start on a cruiser, not some tinpot little escort vessel or clumsy Fleet supply ship.

The only free people he knew or knew of were those so powerful they could not be challenged, yet also smart enough to be bored playing tinpot dictator or god.

I told you that Dolan's cars were built to the sorts of specifications required by tinpot dictators and despotic military leaders.

The FO might get sweaty hands thinking about half-a-dozen British subjects being recruited for tinpot dictators we all have to be nice to, and even give money to, because they happen to be black or brown.

In addition, Summers suggested, the Jaunt had been used by various tinpot dictators to get rid of political dissidents and political adversaries.