ADJECTIVE
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(informal) small and of little importance
our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war
giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction
a little (or small) matter
limited to petty enterprises
a fiddling sum of money
piffling efforts
piffling efforts
a footling gesture
a dispute over niggling details
How To Use footling In A Sentence
- It's fox hunting all over again - I cannot think of a more footling way to judge an author's ability than by the attention he pays to a particular social class.
- But I would be very surprised if most hunt members didn't soon tire of footling about and looked for other ways to relieve the boredom of country life in winter.
- An espionage conviction, no matter how footling the cited offense, was considered tantamount to proof of treason (except in the Fifth District of Wisconsin).
- At work, I am confronted with students engaged in every form of self-destruction, from frittering away their time on footling hedonism, to literal self-laceration and suicide attempts.
- He could always do something useful instead of wasting my time with footling queries.
- Not for us the footling ZT 120, with its mimsy 1.8 engine, nor even the ZT 180, with its utterly yawnsome 2.5-litre V6.
- A cheese eater from the moment I was born, I have always turned my nose up at the footling quoits and mini-pyramids of cream the French call cheese.
- Having taken the lead against Turkey their football became fitful, then flabby, and towards the end was footling.
- a footling gesture
- And he looked back at his 1997 pledges and described them as 'footling'. Times, Sunday Times