How to Use small-time in a Sentence
small-time
adjective-
And yet, parts of the industry still feel small-time.
—Jacob Feldman, Sportico.com, 26 Feb. 2026
-
And too small-time for Carpenter.
—Lili Anolik, Vanity Fair, 12 Jan. 2026
-
Cuban may be worth billions today, but his career started with small-time hustles.
—Preston Fore, Fortune, 28 Jan. 2026
-
From Kennedys and Capote to small-time crooks, this summer isn’t short on characters.
—Town & Country, 13 June 2023
-
Marty, a small-time crook, is facing a second stint in prison and living in his childhood basement.
—Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times, 1 May 2025
-
The need among small-time meme coin creators to peacock for attention became even more acute when celebrities piled in.
—Joel Khalili, WIRED, 12 Sep. 2024
-
At 56, White is no longer a small-time boxing coach from South Boston.
—Jack Crosbie, Rolling Stone, 26 May 2026
-
These results seem pretty small-time compared with remotely hacking a car to steer it into a ditch.
—Neil J. Rubenking, PCMAG, 8 Aug. 2024
-
Ana, along with her friends Malú and Martina, are small-time thieves who seduce rich guys, drug them, and steal from them.
—Anna Marie De La Fuente, Variety, 5 Oct. 2024
-
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of similar crews in Atlanta, many with three-letter names, most of them small-time.
—Charles Bethea, The New Yorker, 28 Aug. 2023
-
The victims were members of the Wonderland Gang, a group of small-time drug dealers.
—Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times, 29 Sep. 2024
-
The small-time thinkers of the faculty won the day, but probably doomed BSC in the process.
—Joseph Goodman | [email protected], al, 23 Feb. 2023
-
This story of a small-time New England criminal takes on the proportions of an epic tragedy.
—The Week Staff, The Week, 10 Apr. 2023
-
Its targets mainly were petty criminals and small-time drug dealers from poor neighborhoods, rights groups say.
—Aie Balagtas See, New York Times, 5 Apr. 2025
-
Hardly anyone wanted to talk about much else — especially not a small-time football team in the second year of its rebirth.
—Rainer Sabin, Detroit Free Press, 1 May 2023
-
But even in a scenario that leaves small-time entrepreneurs in the dust, some advocates argue that medicalization would be a net good.
—Jane C. Hu, The Atlantic, 8 Apr. 2024
-
Her husband began to make small-time drug deals, selling homegrown marijuana and poppies, used to make heroin.
—Brian Murphy, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2023
-
O’Neil has felt the stresses of small-time property ownership firsthand.
—Max Scheinblum, The Denver Post, 27 Feb. 2025
-
The succor of small-time hubris is what good bake-offs are about—bakers driven only by that elegant, unimpeachable motive, to be the best.
—Ruby Tandoh, New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025
-
Some are wealthy Russians buying vehicles for themselves, or small-time entrepreneurs looking to resell cars for a quick buck.
—Jack Ewing, New York Times, 11 May 2023
-
Indeed, few modern-day athletes have springboarded their success in a small-time sport more effectively.
—Zak Keefer, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2026
-
So, say some small-time businessmen hire a truck through a dispatcher, the truck drives up to a field, and there, along the perimeter, a forklift crane pulls the pipe up from the sand.
—Literary Hub, 23 Jan. 2026
-
The family's lack of money became one of the biggest factors that drove the brothers to begin their journey as small-time drug dealers.
—Kayla Grant, People.com, 16 Aug. 2025
-
Most American copper thieves, however, are small-time opportunists drawn to a laughably easy score.
—Vince Beiser, WIRED, 22 Aug. 2024
-
Pablo, a small-time dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline share a deep bond over their obsession with the online game Darknoon.
—Anna Marie De La Fuente, Variety, 23 Sep. 2024
-
He was born in Donelson, a Nashville suburb, and spent his youth running afoul of the law, racking up half a dozen arrests for small-time crimes.
—Sam Kestenbaum, Harper's Magazine, 21 June 2024
-
Belivuk might have remained a small-time thug had his life not intersected with the rise of Aleksandar Vucic.
—Robert F. Worth, New York Times, 3 May 2023
-
With all that activity, small-time Helsinki took off, becoming a boomtown in support of the grand strategic fort.
—Tribune News Service, Baltimore Sun, 10 June 2026
-
Oseguera is said to have begun his storied career in humble fashion, as a small-time drug dealer in California.
—Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2026
-
Elsewhere in Milwaukee, someone has blown up a truck belonging to a small-time booze runner, and Hicks learns that the cops plan to pin the job on him.
—Kathryn Schulz, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'small-time.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Last Updated:
