as in nominal
so small or unimportant as to warrant little or no attention
from his perspective as a billionaire, what the governor got paid was a piffling amount
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for piffling
Adjective
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Recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump says Musk heads despite another nominal administrator, led to firing tens of thousands of workers and targeted more.—
Joey Garrison,
USA TODAY,
9 Mar. 2025 -
The exposures listed on the initial holdings list do add up to more than 100%, with nominal bonds as the biggest category.—
Jesse Pound,
CNBC,
6 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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Freud’s notion of remembering, the inexact reiteration of what came before, is where creativity emerges—that slight drift from the original that lets something unlikely slip in.—
Namwali Serpell,
The New Yorker,
8 Mar. 2025
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Sugarcane honey is a concentrated form of sugarcane juice that has a slight licorice taste and a touch of bitterness.—
Joseph V Micallef,
Forbes,
8 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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That sketch, coming just before the episode’s closing performance by Cypress Hill, was the hour’s peak, containing all the promise of petty obsessions afforded airtime in a chorus of besuited actors shouting a monologue as one.—
Alison Herman,
Variety,
13 Mar. 2025
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This isn’t to say the vigilante trans group in the new world is free of petty catfights.—
Grace Byron,
Vulture,
11 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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Then, the pandemic reduced the schedule to 60 games and Eddie got a piddling 37%.—
Star Tribune,
Star Tribune,
3 Dec. 2020
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Millions of additional claims are expected to stream in from around the country over the coming weeks, while hiring remains piddling.—
Patricia Cohen,
New York Times,
23 Apr. 2020
Adjective
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With that much water needed for even the most trifling tasks, the natural question becomes: How does that water reach those data centers, let alone the world’s farms and factories?—
IEEE Spectrum,
IEEE Spectrum,
28 May 2010
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And yet the movie’s insularity feels trifling and empty.—
David Rooney,
The Hollywood Reporter,
17 Feb. 2024
Adjective
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Regular computers, including the one on your desk, think in tiny bits of information that are either a 1 or a 0—like flipping a light switch on or off.—
Dr. Diane Hamilton,
Forbes,
17 Mar. 2025
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Apply a tiny bit of water to the wonton edges with your finger.—
Sarah Martens,
Better Homes & Gardens,
17 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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Given this, there is no straightforward way to understand what a model is doing on an intuitive level, as from our perspective running inference on a model is nothing more than executing trillions of trivial operations such as addition and multiplication.—
Rahul Gudise,
Forbes,
7 Mar. 2025
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And figuring out that amount was not a trivial task.—
Jayson Stewart,
IEEE Spectrum,
5 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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That pipeline, now at the heart of the NS2 dispute, still carries Russian gas to Germany, yielding between $2 billion and $3 billion in annual transit fees for Ukraine – not an inconsiderable amount for an economy whose total gross domestic product was $154 billion in 2020.—
Fred Weir,
The Christian Science Monitor,
5 Aug. 2021
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For even very good students who can afford the not inconsiderable tuition, deciding which campuses to list on the UC application — each costs $70 — is less about personal preference and more about figuring out which one offers any hope of acceptance.—
Los Angeles Times,
Los Angeles Times,
14 Apr. 2021
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Cite this Entry
“Piffling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/piffling. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
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