piffle
Americannoun
verb (used without object)
-
piffles,
present (3rd person singular)
-
piffled,
past participle, past
-
piffling
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
pifflesimple
-
pifflessimple
-
have piffledperfect
-
has piffledperfect
-
am pifflingprogressive
-
are pifflingprogressive
-
is pifflingprogressive
-
have been pifflingperfect progressive
-
has been pifflingperfect progressive
Past
-
piffledsimple
-
had piffledperfect
-
was pifflingprogressive
-
were pifflingprogressive
-
had been pifflingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of piffle
First recorded in 1840–50; perhaps akin to puff
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:
I defy you to tell me what this blithering piffle actually means.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
They may sound like piffle, and perhaps they are, but they were formative.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 1, 2023
For more than two hours, it pelts you with piffle so egregious — not just puns but also dad jokes, double entendres and booby-trapped one-liners — that, forced into submission, you eventually give in.
From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2023
Past administration GPRs, he added, “typically gush strategic-sounding piffle, exhausting readers with laborious defenses of the status quo. This one at least spared us that.”
From Washington Times ● Nov. 30, 2021
I did my first article for it in an hour when I first woke up this morning—just the smarty-party piffle its readers and advertisers seem to demand.
From The Book of Susan A Novel by Lee Wilson Dodd
Setting a price ridiculously below dealer costs, knowing that a customer will not find anything cheaper elsewhere, and then "uploading" the package with piffles when the buyer returns.
From Time Magazine Archive
They piddled and piffled with iron: I'd given my orders for steel.
From The Seven Seas by Rudyard Kipling
Misther Madden says 'Piffle,' but Oi say where are they piffled to?
From The Cruise of the Dry Dock by T. S. Stribling
I knew — I knew what was coming, when we bid on the Byfleet's keel — They piddled and piffled with iron: I'd given my orders for steel!
From Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling
Yet it went ignored while Sly Stallone’s piffling King Lear act in the mediocre Creed is hailed like the second coming.
From Slate ● Jan. 4, 2016
They want £595 to watch the beach volleyball, though the "canoe sprint" is a piffling £295 – for an event you might not watch if it were taking place in your park boating lake.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 29, 2012
British MPs sold their reputations for a piffling return—one MP submitted a claim for a hot drink he had bought in the House of Commons tearoom.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 9, 2011
Because markets for land are so ill-developed in Africa and governments so weak, rents are piffling: $2 per hectare per year in Ethiopia; $5 in Liberia.
From Economist ● May 5, 2011
The piffling toad steps away from her and says, “Non capisco! Ha!”
From "The Unfinished Angel" by Sharon Creech
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.
