How To Use Petty In A Sentence

This is the very definition of obstructionism: To delay a foregone conclusion for the sake of a petty protest.
Most often, this implies a life on city streets begging, panhandling, petty theft, and using charity and soup kitchens close to the drug source.
The sad fact is that if the Democrats had tried to make a big issue of the matter the press would have criticized them unmercifully for spoiling the 100th birthday celebrations of a great man with their petty partisan politics.
Its images tumble, proliferate and cross-hatch; they are extravagant and loopy and defiantly enormous in their ambition, making everything else look petty and piddling.
One of the biggest dangers to commuters at the time was the constant threat of pickpockets and other petty thieves preying upon unsuspecting victims.

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He successfully reframed the issue as being not about petty internal rules, but instead the little man standing up against the big political machine.
As a long-time B-list critic and junketeer, my conscience has long been inured to the petty scams of the Golden Globes voter shoving another complimentary cream puff into his craw. House of Scams and Fog, Or How to Break Into Your Own Apartment
The ranks of nonconformity thrived in an expanding economy of independency where the artisan might still feel closer to the petty capitalist than to the unskilled labourer.
When the cup of human life is so overflowing with woe and pain and misery, it seems to me a narrow dilettanteism or downright charlatanism to devote one's self to petty or bizarre problems which can have no relation to human happiness, and to prate of self-satisfaction and self-expression. Woman Her Sex and Love Life
But others, founding their assertions upon more plausible reasoning, say that the petty Mussulman kings, who were the neighbours or tributaries of Benabad, justly alarmed at his alliance with a {93} Christian king, solicited the support of the Almoravide. History of the Moors of Spain
Instead of looking at this issue for what it is, we get a petty post about $2-$3 million in "wasted" money. Sound Politics: Your tax dollars at work
In an act of petty vindictiveness she was deprived of the title of Her Royal Highness.
Something about it fills us with such joy that we are able to let go of our every day petty grievances and be the full and expansive people we are.
We cannot divert from a quest that may hold answers to key secrets about the nature of the universal order to track down a few dozen petty brigands.
Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world--the fight for the Liberation of Mankind.
It is not true suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
Family comes first - and petty spats and annoyances are put aside for the greater good of the Shaws.
The massive petty crime is implements under the ethyl alcohol function, this by no means coincidence.
It's amazing how one strong and loving personality can keep all the petty squabbles in check.
Two years ago, he admitted the police had been caught out by a spate of petty hooliganism, but this year he said police leave had been cancelled and extra officers would be on duty until Bonfire Night and beyond.
Perhaps they will dub it the age of unreason, petty bureaucracy and utter silliness. Times, Sunday Times
Her mother, Jackiey, the daughter of a market trader, was described in her daughter's autobiography as a petty thief and "clipper" - a woman who pretends to be a prostitute but runs off with the money instead. DUFF & NONSENSE!
The Admiral wants to see a greater involvement of Leading Hands and Petty Officers in the daily management of junior ratings.
And he's clearly not a man for petty rage. Times, Sunday Times
Lest you think this petty criticism, take a gander at the much more informative Los Angeles Times story generated by the same press conference.
I wonder whet IT you are not getting bored dealing with like the petty cash transaction.
So mean, petty paltry as to deserve contempt.
Add in personal self enrichment from expense fiddles, petty corruption and barefaced lying to that toxicosis. Archive 2008-11-01
*adjustss diamin teara, lifs fanceegoun an kurtsees* ai hoaps u wil bizit mai gran cateau dat oberluks da sen riber! weE can haz pettyfors an champy-ayne! M C A - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
So can a person caged in corporate life begin to assume huge anxieties about petty annoyances.
On the actual day of the murder, he had been arrested and taken into the lock-up on a charge of a very petty theft.
petty officialdom
For that matter, why these petty distinctions between clothing and food, sporting goods and home decor?
But we apparently choose to make an example out of petty transgressors such as these to lull ourselves into the belief that we're winning the battle against crime!
These groups were the intelligentsia, civil servants, the labour aristocracy, and successful petty producers.
'conveyancing' practice than he finds his time too valuable to be spent arguing in cases of assault or petty larceny. Hodge and His Masters
When it is your shop's day, a petty officer is selected to watch selected maintenance evolutions (basically the same duties as the safety petty officer in the squadron).
In other words, it seemed that as petty commodity traders these marketwomen were often unable even to reproduce their present conditions.
The rise in unemployment is paralleled by an increase in petty crime.
A petty officer released the airlock door's locking mechanism and pulled it open.
A petty thief is seen pulling off a cheap scam on a shopkeeper by a major league con-artist who recruits him for a big job.
His decade-long struggle to replace Blair as prime minister was never an open political contest, but a conniving, cowardly and petty bid for personal power.
What drives me up the wall is when the uncouth classes begin their fighting and screeching and petty arguments, or when snide little tattletales run up to me to tell on people.
The inference was unambiguous: the parliament was an intrusive, petty-minded bunch of jobsworths, bereft of any credibility.
He turned to a life of petty thievery when his friend managed to steal a gold coin from a weary traveler.
She had been pilfering from the petty cash for months.
The petty practicalities of the voting system typifies how outdated the whole system is. Times, Sunday Times
I was also tempted to go out to my car and get my gloves but felt that the gloves were a minor and petty concern when there was a missing cat.
Forty-year-old faculty members have usually shed some of their earlier envies, animosities, and petty vanities, enabling them to be more understanding mentors.
The urban petty bourgeoisie is a reliable ally.
Tom Petty reminz me ov when I libbed in Cally-fornia, dribbing fast on freeway fru Marin wif Tom Petty mewosic blasting away. I can waits - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
Take care also to have all of the legal formalities correct and in order - sun sign Arians are renowned for a distaste for ‘petty’ legalities!
Too many petty criminals end up in jail. Times, Sunday Times
MyDynamo, with Jody Petty in the leathers, took the immediate lead and repelled all challengers as he sailed with finesse and precision over the first two miles of National fences.
Hounded by petty bureaucrats out of his cramped offices on Calton Hill, art world legend Demarco has again landed on his feet.
Many of them have bad or at least petty motives - backbiting, the desire to gossip or trade in information for advantage, revenge.
Healthy fact-based skepticism is not equal to toxic absolutive skepticism based on petty feeling. Blogger lynchmobs - Get out the pitchforks!
We do not see that, while we still affect by all means a rigid external formality, we may as soon fall again into a gross conforming stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and stubble, forced and frozen together, which is more to the sudden degenerating of a Church than many subdichotomies of petty schisms. Areopagitica
Most of us, however, take life for granted. We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture that day as far in the future. When we are in buoyant health, death is all but unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out in an endless vista. So we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude toward life.
It might seem a bit petty but we're all furious because we were robbed. The Sun
He gives it a few lines in the context, and almost as an example of petty wrangling over trivial matters. Christianity Today
In contrast, petty theft has a very low rate of reporting to the police, and a low detection rate.
How do three-strikers endure the thought of spending life in prison for a relatively petty crime?
So the main hook is that you have this kid born into a working class family of petty criminals but against all odds, manages to become the greatest hero the world has seen and fight the good fight. Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels and comic books » Eren’s Review Forum
This caused him to become disaffected, and to embark on a career of petty theft. Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 194445
Another trial seems rather petty and pointless. The Sun
Let the good that he did live after him, and the evil be interred with the petty theses of small-minded philosophers.
Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world--the fight for the Liberation of Mankind.
Which of us, in fact, has the force of character to be superior to petty vanity, to _petty fine feelings_, sympathy and self-reproach? ... The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories
Britain is suffering an epidemic of petty crime.
Get set for the most miserable, petty, bitchy and nasty few weeks you've ever experienced.
I had one reader who told me he was reading it outside one day when a ned came up to him -- "ned" being Scots for ... um ... think as disenfranchised as you can get -- the juvenile delinquents from our equivalent of the projects, shell-suited gangs into Buckfast and hard drugs, petty theft and hassling strangers, the type of person that is to your average SF/Fantasy reader as a hyena is to a gazelle. More Aesthetics
They weren't unkind or petty or small. Christianity Today
There were petty accusations of male chauvinism. The Times Literary Supplement
The decision not to allow disabled athletes to take part was seen as petty and bigoted.
Harley Rivera is my best friend, a connoisseur of fine music and petty larceny. A MEANS TO EVIL
His stress on the importance of China in the world situation was ‘petty bourgeois chauvinism’.
He said: 'I came up with the idea to unite football fans to forget their petty rivalries and come together in a national movement. Times, Sunday Times
In time, the press and public came to view the petty ruses and gambits regularly employed by a host of Wall Street speculators as despised tools of fraud and monopoly when adopted by Gould.
Its great achievement is to recover the complexity of a literary mode that could easily be dismissed as vindictive, petty, and obscure.
When all the politics is over, when the petty manoeuvring, the skin-saving, the back-protecting and the blame-shifting of this whole unlovely affair are put to one side, it is this that sticks most in the throat.
Faithful to his instincts of petty tyranny, the Cæsar kept the praefect of Rome kneeling before him for close on half an hour; all this while volleys of vituperations poured from his mouth against all traitors in general, and more especially against the praefect whom he accused of selling his services only in order to gain his own ends. "Unto Caesar"
Don't tell me he was caught doctoring his expenses or stealing the petty cash. THE ENDLESS GAME
The usual petty fine is not enough. The Sun
Even an additional CD or two with some of the best tracks would have been a way for viewers to hear some of these classic songs uninterrupted by Tom Petty pontificating about various musicians and movements.
What emerges from this dynamic is a character who is vicious, close-minded, petty, and rude, and yet who becomes the infallible arbiter of morality for those around him. Your Mileage May Vary | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment
We are not worried about petty morals. READY, STEADY, GO!: Swinging London and the Invention of Cool
The complaints are often petty and unimportant, yet when aired in public, they take on a certain gravitas and momentum. Times, Sunday Times
Too often we busy ourselves with petty distractions, in order to escape the confrontation with reality.
That the people shall be destroyed with the sword: I will cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven, the valley of idolatry, for the gods of the Syrians were gods of the valleys (1 Kings xx. 23), were worshipped in valleys; as the idols of Israel were worshipped on the hills; him also that holdeth the sceptre of power, some petty king or other that used to boast of the sceptre he held from Beth-Eden, the house of pleasure. Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume IV (Isaiah to Malachi)
The meager funds provided by government for medical facilities in rural areas are squandered away by local petty officials.
He spent days in the pub but only witnessed petty crime. The Sun
That was not the action of a small-minded or petty individual.
And in this universal cataclasm of the starry councils, what could a poor Diana do, Diana of the Petty Bag, but abandon her pride of place to some rude Orion? Framley Parsonage
Sidonie was an 'etagere' covered with childish toys, petty, trivial knickknacks, microscopic fans, dolls 'tea-sets, gilded shoes, little shepherds and shepherdesses facing one another, exchanging cold, gleaming, porcelain glances. The French Immortals Series — Complete
These petty rules can lead to frustration and anger.
To engage in a petty, bad - tempered quarrel; squabble.
Pasión gitana por sangre española (Gypsy Passion for Spanish Blood), by Víctor M. Ánchel, an award-winning novella about a clumsy American vampire who becomes the ringleader of a gang of bumbling petty criminals in Andalucía. MIND MELD: Guide to International SF/F (Part I )
I'm tired of your petty little schemes
He swept away much of the petty criminality that financed other illegal activities in the city.
A petty vizier banishes a bostangi to Lemnos; the vizier Azem banishes the petty vizier to Tenedos; the pasha banishes the vizier Azem to Rhodes; the janissaries imprison the pasha and elect another who will banish the worthy A Philosophical Dictionary
He wore the clothes of a petty nobleman; grey and silver embroidered with royal blue and purple.
This is not a buck here or a buck there in the petty cash till.
Petty Officer Waddell, without hesitation, leaped from the aircraft and, with intense enemy fire hitting all around him, raced back and forth carrying the wounded and dead to the aircraft. Heroes or Villains?
Too many petty criminals end up in jail. Times, Sunday Times
It seems clear to me that many of the most trying people we deal with in bureaucracies, particularly government bureaucracies, took their jobs in order to be difficult to people, to exercise petty power over others, or to be nasty with minimal risks of retaliation. Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Follow the Incentives
Even in the advertising industry, it seems that you have to show small-minded, petty acts of vandalism to get noticed.
This can easily rear its head here in drug gangs and petty crime like vandalism without any encouragement.
The pillory was a set of stocks that imprisoned head and arms and was used to humiliate petty offenders, who would be insulted and perhaps pelted with mud by passers-by.
Our attachment to all the petty judgments and opinions and chatter endlessly flowing through our own heads is how we keep God at bay.
It had been confirmed at an earlier court hearing that'the defendant is a serving naval petty officer on board a nuclear submarine. The Sun
As a manifestation of petty selfishness and greed such meanness is hard to credit.
I don't like the idea of stiffnecked government officials deciding what we can and can't read -- and when you ban a site like Kynhun (an e-group that discussed the petty corruption of petty officials in Meghalaya as well as the possibility of seceding from the Indian union), you create a genuine grievance out of a minor kvetch. Archive 2004-06-01
Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools. J. K. Rowling
The boardrooms of media companies are virtual hotbeds of political maneuvering, petty jealousy and back-stabbing.
A petty priestling, who has no other merit than a little lively small-talk and a cavalier air. The French Immortals Series — Complete
One thing Petty has always had in his favour is a very strong musical ethic and analogue-is-best sensibility. Mudcrutch by Mudcrutch « We Don't Count Your Own Visits To Your Blog
This caused him to become disaffected, and to embark on a career of petty theft. Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 194445
In Paris Cafe society we may be viewed as petty tyrants but, say what you will, at least we are not like them, the primitive Yiddish schnorrers in black robes and fur hats.
Nothing was done to stop arbitrary rule by petty officials.
Lo Lung - chi asked, how could little proletarian intellectuals lead big petty - bourgeois intellectuals?
They attribute his stealing of petty items to an untreated and undiagnosed case of kleptomania, a psychiatric condition that causes a person to steal compulsively.
Yesterday's hearing took place in the chaotic fast-track court which is normally used for petty crimes. Times, Sunday Times
Great crimes can also be committed by gangsters and petty criminals - if they have the necessary power.
Unlike the petty bourgeoisie, they employ at least one worker, and therefore at least part of their income is derived from the exploitation of labor power. Macrosociology: An Introduction to Human Societies
Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world--the fight for the Liberation of Mankind.
The girl not allowed to wear the kara is a petty thing for the administrators to have done and it doesn't do them any good," Singh said. The Guardian World News
He became involved in petty crime as a teenager.
Petty criminals and gamblers muse, bicker and banter. Times, Sunday Times
It was a petty problem and they soon solved it.
My laughing and petty revenge seemed to have made that soda sweeter.
She had four felony convictions for burglary and petty theft with priors, and had been out of prison for a couple of years when she coolly shoplifted, then viciously fought me in the parking lot.
Dropping the appeal to the privy council was a matter of petty nationalist self aggrandisement.
Unless people are petty enough to not vote for Shayne to spite Louis, he'll be safe.
'I contend for it that all our civilisation is higher, and that class for class we are in a more advanced culture than the English; that your chawbacon is not as intelligent a being as our bogtrotter; that your petty shopkeeper is inferior to ours; that throughout our middle classes there is not only a higher morality but a higher refinement than with you.' Lord Kilgobbin
In an aside, McLaren manages to both accept and deflect two weaknesses often associated with his work: “While some criticism is substantive — including a welcomed critique of the enciphered language of some academics and a challenge to radical educators to come up with concrete possibilities — much of it is small-minded and petty …” (p. 30). A Review of Capitalists and Conquerors, and an exchange
It's fun to watch when the candidates start arguing between themselves, squabbling like petty children.
Such children in rural areas help their parents on subsistence farms, while in the shanty areas of towns school dropouts engage in petty street vending, with the ever present risk of drifting into crime and vice.
The council executive believes the tactic would deter petty criminals from bad behaviour, and it wants the decision to be devolved from the Met to borough police commanders.
Look at the intricate beauty of the leaves on the trees and see that our petty desires are so unimportant.
All the memories of those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary humiliations, of petty unpoliteness from a half-educated, half-bred, conceited, and arrogant people fell from us like a heavy knapsack. Notes of a War Correspondent
Petty corruption is rife in the country, from backhanders in hospitals to police rip-offs; foreign businessmen rank it as among Asia's most fraud-ridden economies.
Apart from farmers, even the old petty bourgeoisie have grown or remained stable as a proportion of the labour force.
No matter how childish, no matter how petty or wrong she'd been I was always on her side.
Minutes after the sonobuoy was in the water, the faint sound of a submarine screw entered the headphones of a young petty officer aboard the helicopter.
A very short trial convinced her that a curricle was the prettiest equipage in the world; the chaise and four wheeled off with some grandeur, to be sure, but it was a heavy and troublesome business, and she could not easily forget its having stopped two hours at Petty France. Northanger Abbey
Lee Petty, the venerable patriarch, died on April 5 at age 86 of complications from a stomach aneurysm.
Owen Wilson plays a petty thief living in Hawaii, a place where apparently even the poorest dirtbag can afford an apartment opening onto white sandy beaches.
But instead of leaving with a fistful of petty cash, he ends up in hospital after a hiding from Rob. The Sun
It drew us together for a manageable problem that was focused outside our own petty bickering. Christianity Today
The scheme follows a similar tactic adopted by Scottish police who have posted constables at schools to tackle youths known to be involved in petty crimes such as housebreaking, theft and anti-social behaviour.
The closest thing to nobility found in our ranks is the bastard son of a petty knight (the captain).
As the Alabama sortied across the Pacific, it dawned on Chief Petty Officer Feller that one way to recoup some of the money he and other servicemen-ballplayers had sacrificed during the war was to orchestrate a series of interracial barnstorming games. Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert
Maybe you're a chocolate addict, ever ready to spend your petty cash on another bar of Snickers.
Go back and take the family, the tribe, the petty principality, the little kingdom; it develops into the Heptarchy, and each Englishman begins to see, slowly, of course, but yet gradually-perhaps it takes centuries-he begins to see that every other Englishman is his fellow-countryman. Education and Empire Unity
The survival of the old elites extended to the gentry and petty nobility.
There is no room for petty insularity and sectarian nonsense - the Scots must see themselves as nimble enough to change and take on the world's best.
Thus the headman had a veto over criminal prosecutions for the petty offences over which village tribunals had exclusive jurisdiction.
Missing silver spoons and cooked petty cash were trivialities usually expiable at the price of a boot-assisted dismissal; but this --! The Yellow Claw
Such an occasion had now come, and he had desired his sister to give the new Lord Petty Bag no rest till he should have promised to use all his influence in getting the vacant prebend for Mark Robarts. Framley Parsonage
You also wrote: "Every workplace or institution is full of politics and petty jealousies, that is human nature, but the sheer viciousness and bloodthirstyness of academia is astounding. The Dangers (?) Of Academic Blogs
Don't assume every complaint is petty or unmerited. Times, Sunday Times
The standard isn't any different for a petty theft arrest than it would for the arrest of a capital crime.
Or only a petty, jealous one? Christianity Today
He got the sack for petty thieving.
He and his friends, pursuing “a nobler destiny,” felt “no disposition to truckle to the petty usurper, who came into power against the wishes of the great men of his own party, and whose personal character was unworthy of the favor of the meanest minion that shouted in his train.” A Country of Vast Designs
It is not true suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
Who cares about the unchangeable petty prejudices of the deeply stupid as long as they are prevented formally and rigorously from acting upon them?
Why did a petty-bourgeois nationalist outlook gain ascendancy?
It was a petty tactic to try and dupe the officials and undermine a generally well natured game.
Burglary and petty thievery, however, are common.
Then there are the petty differences in industrial standards and regulations from country to country.
I do see that literal-mindedness can be petty and reductive; a great deal of communication happens outside literal meaning. Times, Sunday Times
As such, he is the object of much spiteful envy and petty jealousy from members opposite.
Many of the major advances in the pulmonary circulation were led by mavericks, such as Forssman, Moser, and Petty, who pursued their passion against prevailing opinion.
Taken in isolation, my boss's actions seemed more petty than vindictive. Times, Sunday Times
Here then, plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only of the very humblest order, but proverbially sordid at that, we find clearly set down, long generations ago, the whole [Page: 99] four-fold analysis and synthesis of civic life we have been above labouring for. Civics: as Applied Sociology
Another trial seems rather petty and pointless. The Sun
This resulted in an unseemly scramble from the same prisoners all claiming to be guilty (usually of petty misdemeanours). Times, Sunday Times
The petty commander proved ineffective and spent much of his time feuding with a rival tribe. Times, Sunday Times
They resort to petty thievery to make a few extra bucks and, by chance, end up videotaping a mob hit that lands them in water over their heads.
Not tipping makes me feel mean and petty. Times, Sunday Times
Perhaps as a consequence, the year 1352 saw the introduction of the Statute of Treasons defining great treason against the king and petty treason against local lords.
More widely known for its petty squabbles and back-biting, the women's game closed ranks in support of Morariu.
At another level, people who once made a meagre living from tiny businesses have been warned by those who took them over in the chaos following the intense period of violence against any attempt to reclaim their handcarts or petty shops.
Many of the cases they cited included the harassment of black workers and youth like Thomas, or their arrest for petty infractions.
Yet the villagers are not idealized, but portrayed with all their faults and petty hostilities.
The movie is a study in intolerance, though less the big, genocidal brand than the petty, obstinate kind that occurs in situations where a man sets himself apart from his community.
Who chose this petty bureaucrat to run a totalitarian regime with control over laws governing 500million people? The Sun
Now she is reported by by-standers in York for brutally punching a petty thief to the ground, she is arrested and investigated, and she becomes a Conservative Party have-a-go poster girl. Con-Watch: Sticking Plaster and Law-and-Order Policy
This is petty and a bit strange. The Sun
How did he end up falling for her during all of their petty arguments and disagreements?
Of course, history has been replete with despotisms and petty dictatorships.
For decades, petty rules, silly laws and frivolous lawsuits held no power over Common Sense.
Or only a petty, jealous one? Christianity Today
Petty, mundane chores and tasks you need to catch up on take up most of your time today. The Sun
Evidently she has committed some petty crime, but she's frustratingly vague about it. Christianity Today
The staff ejected the kids as discreetly as possible and took a quick inventory of stolen items, petty stuff not worth reporting to the police, including sliced bread, strawberry jam, orangeade, energy bars, baby formula, nappies and a bottle. Three Stations : An Arkady Renko Novel
With one lap to go in the race, Petty's car blew a tire.
At the lowest level were thousands of petty jurisdictions, many private, but all fully staffed by a complement of judges, clerks, procurators, ushers, and tipstaffs.

How To Use Petty In A Sentence

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