Small-minded

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Selfish, petty; constrained in thought, limited in scope of consideration, not mindful of the big picture.

    "Dinwiddie was evidently actuated by the petty pique of a narrow and illiberal mind, impatient of contradiction, even when in error. . . . It may excite a grave smile at the present day to find Washington charged by this very small-minded man with looseness in his way of writing to him."

Adjective
  1. 1
    contemptibly narrow in outlook wordnet

Example

More examples

"While small-minded, xenophobic or outrightly racist people falsely believe that only persons of Anglo-Saxon or German origin are to be considered Americans, the United States has long prided itself on being a so-called melting pot, embracing both its Indigenous population and immigrants who have settled there from elsewhere."

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