drop in the bucket

1. A very small quantity, especially one that is too small. For example, These contributions are just a drop in the bucket; the new church wing will cost thousands more. John Wycliffe's followers used this seemingly modern phrase in their translation of the Bible (1382), and it also appears in the 1611 King James version (Isaiah 40:15): “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance.”

Example Sentences

But that is a drop in the bucket. xAI needs $18 billion just to buy the 300,000 microchips required to run Colossus 2, its second giant data center in Tennessee, the Journal previously reported.

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And yet, he added, this deal is “a drop in the bucket compared to where we need to go.”

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Their assets are still a drop in the bucket of the $7.4 trillion sitting in traditional money-market funds, according to the Investment Company Institute.

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“The private and public loss is so vast here. Whatever assets this guy has, I would say, wouldn’t even qualify as a drop in the bucket.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

On the balance sheets of multibillion-dollar companies, the cost of private aviation is a drop in the bucket of jet fuel.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• bit 
• trivial amount www.thesaurus.com