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Example sentences for "petty"

Lexicographically close words:
petting; pettish; pettishly; pettitoes; petto; petul; petulance; petulancy; petulant; petulantly
  1. I once had the happiness to detect a youth in a petty act of larceny.

  2. The influx of so many strangers from the surrounding country was not particularly advantageous to the morals of the Mazatlanese community: petty thieving and pilfering were all the rage.

  3. She returned to Ashridge, to be pursued, even there, with petty annoyances.

  4. The prince himself had as yet met with no discourtesy; but disputes had broken out early between the English and Spanish retinues, and petty taunts and insolences had passed among them.

  5. In any case the members were apt to be creatures of a republican despot or else delegates of politicians or petty factions.

  6. Besides, he often brought from the Old World petty provincial traditions which were intensified in the New.

  7. It's all petty expenditure not worth considering, but, mind you, in the course of the summer it will run up to some two hundred roubles.

  8. Some petty official called Tchalikov had long been out of a situation, was ill, and living in Gushtchin's Buildings; his wife was in consumption, and he had five little girls.

  9. Peter Horry had been engaged in a series of petty but rather amusing skirmishes, in the neighborhood of Georgetown.

  10. The courage of the Whigs was ennobled, and their timidity rebuked, when they beheld such a daring spirit, and one so crowned by frequent successes, in such petty numbers.

  11. State, he did not affect, and the simplicity and modesty of his character may be easily inferred from this petty enumeration of the aids and comforts which he thought proper to draw from his successes.

  12. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.

  13. If I had done this before I might have been saved much of this petty personal struggle and put my divine energy into bigger things.

  14. I know this was the way it impressed me, and all my petty troubles were forgotten in the grand scene before me.

  15. In his stern pride he did not condescend to put in motion any revenge against these petty poltroons, but went on his way with absolute indifference to all outward seeming.

  16. Job was somehow on fair terms with nearly everybody, and that is a wonderful thing in a village, where everybody knows everybody's business, and petty interests continually cross.

  17. His pride, too, was gone, and the petty pomp of artificial character thing aside like an unnecessary garment which only oppresses the wearer.

  18. During this time I practised a variety of petty thefts without being suspected.

  19. Snowden Dunhill gradually sank into habitual drunkenness, and was suspected of reverting to his old tricks of petty larceny.

  20. Among the many petty states there were many Hsien-pi kingdoms, but only a single, quite small Hun state, that of the Northern Liang.

  21. Everywhere now independent governments sprang up, and for five years China was split up into countless petty states.

  22. The Hsien-pi groups in the various fragments of the empire, with the exception of the petty states in Kansu, also continued, only as tribal fragments led by a few old ruling families.

  23. There came a tap at the door; Moira spoke wearily, although she did not turn her head; this was probably the landlady on some petty matter of the household.

  24. He was miles away from the petty smallnesses and jealousies that had been his for some time past.

  25. A pang shot through my heart as I thought that the woman whom I held dearer than anything on earth hesitated to trust me with a petty secret.

  26. I tried to remember my old self, my dejection, my listlessness, my bad luck, my petty disappointments.

  27. Still, however, they maintained their hereditary character and hereditary possessions, with all the tenacity of petty German princes in the midst of the empire.

  28. Still all these were petty grievances, which might now and then ruffle the surface of his mind, as a summer breeze will ruffle the surface of a mill pond, but they could not disturb the deep-seated quiet of his soul.

  29. Even the light gossip of the maid, full of petty human cares and joys, had done me good--diverted my thoughts from brooding.

  30. A forecastleman, addressing a petty officer, inquired how she could hail from San Francisco, then belonging to the United States, and fly the Peruvian flag.

  31. Turn your thoughts away from Moses and his ragged cohorts, and all the petty beliefs and blunders of the ancient world.

  32. I know no literature more ineffably dreary than the parcelling out of these wild and glorious visions, the attaching of them to this and that petty human fulfilment.

  33. For myself I can only think with shame how closely my present conditions do resemble my young desires, in all their petty range, their trivial particularity.

  34. I could talk the Injun language, and after making one of the petty chiefs of their band a few little presents, King and I went out to catch our two hosses, but they had been running with the Injuns' cayuses so long we couldn't get near them.

  35. Following his employer, Mr Broughton, into the petty law courts at Barnham, he saw how the right and the wrong, the sorrow or the joy of human beings depended almost upon the quibble of a word, the incident of a slip of the pen.

  36. Not all the hunger and thirst of downright destitution is so hard to bear to a proud spirit as the insults of a petty creditor.

  37. Merton, when the messenger reached him, was in the Petty Sessional Court at Barnham, watching the preliminary proceedings against poor Jenkins, which happened to take place that day.

  38. On the contrary, it will impress the shrewd observer that the jealousies and petty animosities, which the poets of our day have flung aside, still irritate and gnaw into the hearts of this kindred class of imaginative men.

  39. It is roasted before eaten; the kernel, which is twofold; is very sweet, and forms an important article of traffic to the petty hucksters.

  40. At length the cause came on, and after some few minutes of talk was adjourned, being but a petty matter.

  41. For long the quarrel between Titus and his jealous brother had smouldered, now over the petty question of a captive it had broken into flame.

  42. All the jealousy, the factious spirit, and the prejudice, which petty local sovereignties are bound to engender, flourished apace; and the general effect was to develop what European statesmen of a certain period termed Particularism.

  43. In temperament, in breadth of mind, and in contempt for petty {187} and sordid aims, Blake and Thompson had much in common.


  44. The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "petty" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
    Other words:
    abject; abominable; arrant; atrocious; authoritarian; banal; base; beggarly; bickering; bigoted; captious; casual; caviling; cheap; cheesy; closed; constricted; contemptible; cramped; crummy; cursory; deaf; debased; deficient; depraved; depthless; despicable; dirty; disgusting; empty; evasive; execrable; fanatical; few; fine; flagrant; foul; frail; frivolous; fulsome; grave; gross; hack; hedging; heinous; hidebound; illiberal; immaterial; imperfect; inadequate; incidental; incompetent; inconsequential; inconsiderable; insignificant; insufficient; insular; light; little; low; maladroit; malicious; meager; mean; measly; mediocre; miniature; minor; minute; miserable; monstrous; narrow; nearsighted; nefarious; negligible; niggardly; niggling; obnoxious; odious; paltry; parochial; pathetic; petty; picayune; piddling; piffling; poky; poor; potty; provincial; punk; puny; purblind; quibbling; rank; reptilian; scabby; scrubby; scurvy; shabby; shallow; shoddy; short; shortsighted; shuffling; shyster; small; squalid; stingy; stuffy; superficial; tinhorn; tiny; trifling; trivial; uncharitable; ungenerous; unimportant; unmentionable; unskillful; unworthy; vain; venial; vile; wretched


    Some related collocations, pairs and triplets of words:
    petty officer; petty officers