picayunish

adjective

Definition of picayunishnext
as in unimportant

Related Words

Relevance

Dissimilar Words

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for picayunish
  1. unimportant
  2. petty
  3. puny
  4. trivial
  5. picayune
  6. nominal
  7. piddling
  8. negligible
Adjective
  • Anything that seems relatively unimportant, like who sits on what dais, becomes the calamity of the century.
    — Kathryn VanArendonk, Vulture, 30 Oct. 2026
  • That said, this does not mean the Detect, Respond and Recover pillars of the NIST CSF are unimportant.
    — Andrew Ginter, Forbes.com, 20 Oct. 2026
Definition of unimportant
Adjective
  • The former sheriff claimed Luna has presided over a deep decline in department morale and staffing while being too soft on drug users, the homeless and petty criminals.
    — Itzel Luna, Los Angeles Times, 4 Nov. 2026
  • Takeshi’s father is a petty and proud man, in ways continually expanded upon throughout the film’s runtime, though how he’s actually framed never truly changes.
    — Kambole Campbell, Variety, 3 Nov. 2026
Definition of petty
Adjective
  • The losers will be SpaceX’s current shareholders that give up almost half their company for puny profits and big promises.
    — Shawn Tully, Fortune, 22 Oct. 2026
  • 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.
    — Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 9 July 2026
Definition of puny
Adjective
  • These sounds are strange bedfellows, but the delirium rarely feels indulgent or trivial.
    — Kieran Press-Reynolds, Pitchfork, 26 Oct. 2026
  • Wiring the Teensy to the magnetic-imaging tile was trivial, only complicated by the fact that one side of the board has a silk-screen error that misidentifies the SPI connections (SparkFun says this will be fixed in future runs of the board).
    — Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum, 26 Oct. 2026
Definition of trivial
Adjective
  • The two events share a history — one that illustrates just how the plate program has become picayune, politicized and potentially hazardous to public safety.
    — Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, The Orlando Sentinel, 16 Apr. 2026
  • By itself, this habit might seem picayune.
    — Jeet Heer, Washington Post, 18 Nov. 2025
Definition of picayune
Adjective
  • While this milestone drew headlines, nominal dollar numbers are the wrong metric to focus on in connection with fiscal matters.
    — Steve H. Hanke, Fortune, 7 Nov. 2026
  • Deflation and weak corporate profitability are already eroding China’s fiscal revenues, which have basically been flat in nominal terms since 2019.
    — Oliver Melton, Foreign Affairs, 5 Nov. 2026
Definition of nominal
Adjective
  • Chris regards his role in the deaths and disappearances of thousands of innocents with a weary shrug—and, on rare dark nights of the soul, a piddling note of regret.
    — Justin Chang, New Yorker, 30 Oct. 2026
  • Then, the pandemic reduced the schedule to 60 games and Eddie got a piddling 37%.
    — Star Tribune, Star Tribune, 3 Dec. 2020
Definition of piddling
Adjective
  • Album sales contributed 19,000 units to the total, streaming activity brought in 11,000 units, and there was a negligible amount of track-equivalent sales activity.
    — Trevor Anderson, Billboard, 3 Nov. 2026
  • It could be used to create speed-of-light connections between server racks in AI data centers that generate almost no heat and consume negligible energy.
    — Reed Albergotti, semafor.com, 28 Oct. 2026
Definition of negligible
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

picayunes
picayunish
pick
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Picayunish.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/picayunish. Accessed 10 Nov. 2026.

Copy Citation
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences

More from Merriam-Webster

Word of the Day

Listen to the pronunciation of defer

See Definitions and Examples »

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

How to Use 'Who' vs. 'Whom'

31 Useful Rhetorical Devices

More Commonly Misspelled Words

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

'Affect' vs. 'Effect'
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words, Vol. 5

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

The Longest Long Words List

Even More Bird Names that Sound Like Insults (and Sometimes Are)

12 Lovely and Unusual Words for the Natural World
See More

Popular

See More

How to Use 'Who' vs. 'Whom'

Great Big List of Beautiful and Useless Words, Vol. 5

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
woman sitting on floor holding book in front of her face on pink background
Famous Novels, Last Lines Quiz Needless to say, spoiler alert.
See All