petty

From Middle English pety, from Middle French petit, English since the late 14th century. The disparaging meaning developed over the 16th century.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɛti/
• Homophone: Petty
  • (General American) IPA^(key): [ˈpʰɛɾi]
  • Homophones: Petty, pedi

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛti

petty (comparative pettier or more petty, superlative pettiest or most petty)

1. (obsolete except in set phrases) Little, small, secondary in rank or importance.

   petty officer, petty cash

   • 1671, John Milton, Samson Agonistes

     Like a petty god I walked about, admired of all.

2. Insignificant, trifling, or inconsiderable.

   a petty fault

   • 2018 February, Robert Draper, “They are Watching You—and Everything Else on the Planet: Technology and Our Increasing Demand for Security have Put Us All under Surveillance. Is Privacy Becoming just a Memory?”, in National Geographic‎, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, ISSN 0027-9358, OCLC 1049714034, archived from the original on 14 June 2018:

     Later today in Finsbury Park, the cameras would spend hours panning across 35,000 festivalgoers in search of pickpockets, drunken brawlers, and other assorted agents of petty mischief.

3. Narrow-minded, small-minded.
4. Begrudging in nature, especially over insignificant matters.

   That corporation is only slightly pettier than they are greedy, and they are overdue to reap the consequences.

• (little, unimportant): See Thesaurus:insignificant
• (begrudging): grudgeful, grudging

• (little): See Thesaurus:big
• (begrudging): See Thesaurus:kindly
• (small-minded): broad-minded

• quibble

petty (plural petties)

1. (usually in the plural, obsolete) A little schoolboy, either in grade or size.
2. (now historical) A class or school for young schoolboys.
3. (dialectal, euphemistic) An outhouse: an outbuilding used as a lavatory.

• (school for young schoolboys): ABC, petty school
• (class for young schoolboys): petty form
• (outhouse): See Thesaurus:outhouse

• "petty, adj. and n.", in the Oxford English Dictionary (2005), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• petty in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• petty in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.