Cards. a game of poker in which the ante or basic bet is one cent.
Informal. any business arrangement or transaction involving a trifling or paltry sum of money.
involving a trifling sum of money; small in amount.
a penny-ante investment.
inconsiderable; minor; small-time.
An Americanism dating back to 1850–55
An Americanism dating back to 1930–35
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And yes, it was penny ante, another irony.
From Slate ● Mar. 29, 2021
The example of this article deals with lobsters - pretty penny ante stuff - but the principles apply to all trade.
From New York Times ● Nov. 12, 2017
The Watergate investigation took two years, and it was of a penny ante burglary down the street from the White House.
From New York Times ● Nov. 3, 2017
"Voters are fed up with this penny ante, picky business."
From Time Magazine Archive
He called the other maverick schools he'd given grants, and the penny ante commercial organizations he'd set on their feet.
From The Great Gray Plague by Jones, Raymond F.
As far as they're concerned, this is penny-ante stuff hardly even worth talking about.
From Salon ● Dec. 7, 2022
Huge losses leading to penny-ante tax payments isn’t a good look.
From Fox News ● Sep. 28, 2020
Bad manners, naked selfishness, penny-ante nitpicking and ham-fisted abuse of power will make club life obsolete for anybody under 50 faster than you can say “OK, Boomer.”
From Golf Digest ● Mar. 2, 2020
Read together, it’s a catalogue of despair that also can represent the redirection of our social rage to penny-ante altruism.
From The Guardian ● May 7, 2018
But those penny-ante squares who came in there putting on their millionaires’ airs, the young ones and the old ones both, only annoyed me.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
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.
