What is "petty"

Usage examples of "petty".

It was all amazingly petty, no doubt, but what was there remaining for me to do?

Its author was already so thoroughly anathematized that further curses from eternal Rome would seem petty.

There, in the eyes of his former compadres, he was apotheosized from a rural campesino into a nuevo rico who claimed he could buy the entire landscape of his birth, its petty aristocrats, snobs and bigwigs thrown in for good measure.

Simon had all the more opportunity of shining at the bar in the arrondissement of Arcis because he was the only barrister, solicitors pleading their own cases in these petty localities.

The common man, busied about his petty concerns, did not know nor think about collective affairs because at the time there existed no knowledge or ordered thought in an assimilable form to reach down and stimulate his mind.

Acceptance of autocracy, of blind obedience to the petty tyrants who ruled as princes, became ingrained in the German mind.

The prince led the way indoors, and they were heartily welcomed by the queen, who kept no more state at Bearn than would be observed by any petty nobleman in France.

While the female sits close, the male perches on top of the nest, occasionally beguiling the time by inconsequent repairs and petty squabbles with next door neighbours.

In another part of the ship, Petty Officer First Class Sheldon Bonner stripped to his skivvies and lay back on his rack, an envelope in his left hand.

Treger in turn would convince Brassard that he had better rackets under his thumb than petty larceny.

Nothing could be a greater burlesque upon the negotiation than this treaty of alliance concluded with the petty duke of Wolfenbuttle, who very gravely guarantees to his Britannic majesty the possession of his three kingdoms, and obliges himself to supply his majesty with five thousand men, in consideration of an annual subsidy of five-andtwenty thousand pounds for four years.

Calabria wheedling, remonstrating, cajoling and patronizing the new master by turns, now for his misguided notions of fairness in dealing with the striking miners, now for the uses of influence in getting ahead, breaking off for a highly theatrical interlude of mugging and arson and here came the playful glissando again as new comic possibilities emerged in the parade of petty thieves, rumpots, fugitives from wives and creditors and a brace of Chippewa Indians being cursorily questioned, pummeled, browbeaten, paid and fleeced as recruits for the Union army by the mine manager in his time away from raising stores of vermifuges, decorative sabres, trusses and mule feed cut with sand in the patriotic cause.

Peter Horry had been engaged in a series of petty but rather amusing skirmishes, in the neighborhood of Georgetown.

They helped feed and clothe the castoffs, undesirables, and petty criminals excised from Kundalan society, who lived high in the icebound reaches of the Djenn Marre under crushing physical conditions.

That petty officers with records as martinets and incompetents are suddenly promoted to quadrant leaders?