Paltry

//ˈpɔltɹi// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Trashy, trivial, of little value.

    "This is indeed a paltry flyer about a silly product."

  2. 2
    Of little monetary worth.

    "Could someone hope to survive on such a paltry income?"

  3. 3
    Despicable; contemptibly unimportant.

    "a paltry coward"

Adjective
  1. 1
    contemptibly small in amount wordnet
  2. 2
    not worth considering wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
miserabletriflingthreadbareabjectabominableabstemious

Example

More examples

"Of all the many millions of things that I might do, the things that are worth doing are but a paltry few."

Etymology

From Middle Low German paltrig (“ragged, rubbishy, worthless”), from palter, palte (“cloth, rag, shred”), from Old Saxon *paltro, *palto (“cloth, rag”), from Proto-Germanic *paltrô, *paltô (“scrap, rag, patch”). Of uncertain ultimate origin, but perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *polto- (“cloth”), see also Proto-Slavic *poltьno (“linen”). Cognate with Low German palterig (“ragged, torn”), dialectal German palterig (“paltry”). Compare also Low German palte (“rag”), West Frisian palt (“rag”), Saterland Frisian Palte (“strip; band; tape”), dialectal German Palter (“rag”), Danish pjalt (“rag, tatter”), Swedish palta (“rag”). See also palterly and pelting.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.