paltry
Americanadjective
-
ridiculously or insultingly small.
a paltry sum.
- Synonyms:
- insignificant, slight, inconsiderable, minor
-
utterly worthless.
-
mean or contemptible.
a paltry coward.
adjective
-
insignificant; meagre
-
worthless or petty
Synonym Usage
See petty.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of paltry
First recorded in 1560–70; from Low German paltrig “ragged,” equivalent to *palter “rag” ( dialectal German Palter ) + -ig -y 1
Explanation
A paltry amount is so small it's not even worth thinking about. In the novel Oliver Twist, when Oliver is given a paltry amount of gruel — not nearly enough — he asks, "Please, sir, can I have some more?" Paltry is a laughably small amount — the waiter might chuck a paltry tip in the garbage. If you have only 50 cents in your bank account, it's such a paltry amount, you may as well be broke. It can also mean "not worth considering" or "not important." If you keep breaking your promises, your friends will get sick of your paltry excuses.
Vocabulary lists containing paltry
"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe
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Paltry Parlance: Synonyms for "Few"
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The Odyssey
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Entering Tuesday, he had a solid .822 OPS on the road and a paltry .558 OPS at Dodger Stadium.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
“But discovery revealed that Defendants’ paltry ‘intelligence’ was manufactured to justify operations at public access locations Defendants were already intent on raiding,” according to the motion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
Graduates will enter an economy struggling with weak consumer demand, where year-on-year retail sales contracted for the first time in three years in May, and revenue in the catering sector rose a paltry 0.6 percent.
From Barron's ● Jul. 2, 2026
Phil Taylor, director of the charity Open Seas, described the fine as "paltry".
From BBC ● Jun. 8, 2026
I longed to speak, but could summon only words of paltry thanks and pale affection, so I left them unsaid.
From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein
So far, milder summer temperatures have spared him from the prospect of even paltrier yields.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 2, 2014
If one of the meanest of human conditions is conscious heroism, paltrier yet is heroism before the fact, incapable of self realization!
From The Marquis of Lossie by George MacDonald
He must maintain appearances in keeping with his associations—or drop downscale to meaner opportunities and paltrier prizes.
From The Law of Hemlock Mountain by Hugh Lundsford
The design is the same in both, the proportions also; but the one is a chimney, the other a paltry model of a paltrier edifice.
From The Poetry of Architecture Or, the Architecture of the Nations of Europe Considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character by John Ruskin
It is a triumph over cowardice, baseness, the love of ease and safety, all the paltrier aspects of our nature; but a triumph over death it is not.
From God and Mr. Wells A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' by William Archer
This not only explains why Jupiter only has the paltriest of rings at present; it suggests that it likely never had large rings.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2022
Meanwhile, the true laborers of the book industry — those who hustle and work the angles, who take the greatest risks and reap the paltriest rewards — will barely get any bookseller facetime at all.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2020
The spring snowpack is the paltriest ever measured — by April it contained just 5% of a normal year’s water — and by the end of August the major reservoirs held 59% of their historical average.
From Nature ● Sep. 29, 2015
He had been known to quit a house on the paltriest excuse, removing to another in which he could not expect equally good treatment.
From Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages by Rudyard Kipling
Nick him for the paltriest sum, and he lets out a squawk you can hear at Land's End.
From Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
