puny
Americanadjective
-
of less than normal size and strength; weak.
-
unimportant; insignificant; petty or minor.
a puny excuse.
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Obsolete. puisne.
adjective
-
having a small physique or weakly constitution
-
paltry; insignificant
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of puny
First recorded in 1540–50; spelling variant of puisne
Explanation
Are your muscles looking small, weak, and totally inferior? In other words, puny? Sounds like somebody needs to eat more spinach. Tiny, shrimpy, wimpy and totally unthreatening. That's puny in a nutshell — a very small, totally lame looking nutshell. It's most often used to describe someone's inferior physique, but can also apply to anything little that's not about to get in your way. A puny mountain would be no challenge to an Olympic skier, just as a puny plate of hot dogs would be laughable to a world speed-eating champion.
Vocabulary lists containing puny
The Watsons Go to Birmingham
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List 13
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Beowulf vocabulary
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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:
To achieve a similar impact, Johnson appears to be wearing a muscular silicone suit over his 6-foot-5 frame, but the extra padding just makes his head look puny.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
More often, he is a reckoning, reminding us of how puny we are in nature’s schemes.
From Salon ● Mar. 20, 2026
Sticking with puny but potent items: Lego unveiled its Smart Play system, which incorporates bricks stuffed with mini computers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 11, 2026
That's a contrast to most stadium concerts, where the message is more like: "Look upon me, puny mortals, and be astonished by my divine talents and somewhat improbable physique."
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2025
“But don’t bother. Hell, it wouldn’t be fair. You against that poor little puny thing.”
From "The Great Gilly Hopkins" by Katherine Paterson
As if being punier is not bad enough, the sharks also become inferior hunters.
From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2024
Hulk recently smashed Twitter, or at least his punier human half Mark Ruffalo did.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 18, 2014
In 2003, an anthropologist at Northwestern University named William Leonard published a study arguing that the price we paid for a bigger brain may have been punier muscles.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 21, 2012
Their outburst served to make the Nationals' seem even punier than it was.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 28, 2010
He could see them in their leather flight jackets, their dark mantles, having just come down from doing things that smaller, punier men could never do, doing things that only gods could do.
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
But I am often the puniest person in the room, and it’s getting worse.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 11, 2020
It pleases me, though, when I’m in Tucson to drive up Broadway and park the rental just to conduct my insignificant banking in a building that seems to frame and elevate the puniest of transactions.
From New York Times ● Jun. 12, 2015
During the 2011-12 regular season, teams committed 19.6 fouls per game, the puniest amount in NBA history.
From Slate ● Jun. 6, 2012
The confluence of balmy temperatures and boring pictures led to the puniest Memorial Day box-office total since 2001, and, as the stats-mashers at Hollywood.com note, the fewest tickets sold since 1993.
From Time ● May 31, 2010
It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years every little bon mot was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, the puniest youngest brat of them being christened "Old Joe."
From The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 A Typographic Art Journal by Various
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.
