small fry
Americannoun
plural
small fry, small fry, small fries-
a child: He's a small fry with a big personality.
Here's a treat for the small fry.
He's a small fry with a big personality.
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an unimportant person or object.
Her fancy parties were closed to the small fry.
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a small or young fish.
plural noun
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people or things regarded as unimportant
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young children
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young or small fishes
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Young children, as in This show is not suitable for small fry .
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Persons of little importance or influence, as in She wasn't about to invite the Washington small fry to the reception . Both usages allude to fry in the sense of “young or small fish.” [Late 1800s]
Other Word Forms
- small-fry adjective
Etymology
Origin of small fry
First recorded in 1895–1900; fry 2
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.
Such small fry could easily flail or fail.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 13, 2026
Several clients raised the question of whether this bet was being redefined to benefit “whales,” or big-money gamblers, at the expense of the small fry.
From MarketWatch • Jan. 5, 2026
Some passages one might almost call psychedelic if that word didn’t seem inappropriate to small fry.
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 8, 2024
Cricket is small fry in Milpitas, located in Silicon Valley, but it’s the only sport that matters in India, so down to a baseball park they went to play cricket.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 12, 2022
The arrests netted only a few small fry, but the Nazis now knew that their codes had been broken.
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
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.
