pinprick

[pin-prik]

noun

any minute puncture made by a pin or the like.

a negligible irritation or annoyance.

Origin of pinprick

First recorded in 1745–55; pin + prick

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for pinprick

Contemporary Examples of pinprick

The gap between rhetoric and action was on vivid display this weekend with pinprick U.S. strikes in northern Iraq.
Obama's Iraq-Syria Dilemma: No Force Now on the Ground Can Beat ISIS
Jamie Dettmer
August 26, 2014

Historical Examples of pinprick

Somehow he felt oddly reluctant to inflict even a pinprick of pain on this particular patient.
Afterwards
Kathlyn Rhodes
And now thou art boasting aloud over this pinprick, which harms me not at all.
Stories from the Iliad
H. L. Havell
The cavalry horses and transport animals suffered from bursati, and even a pinprick expanded into a large open sore.
The River War
Winston S. Churchill
Used as he had become, the past two years, to pinpricks of this sort, his colour betrayed how much the present pinprick hurt him.
The Brentons
Anna Chapin Ray
Besides, to shoot a mere amateur in Chouannerie would be as absurd as to fire on a balloon when a pinprick would disinflate it.
The Chouans
Honore de Balzac

British Dictionary definitions for pinprick

pinprick

noun

a slight puncture made by or as if by a pin

a small irritation

verb

(tr) to puncture with or as if with a pin

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for pinprick

also pin-prick, 1851, from pin (n.) + prick (n.). Used figuratively of petty irritations from 1885. Earlier pin's prick (1825).