Link Centre Dictionary

picayune

pi·cayune

UK/ˌpɪkəˈjuːn/ US/ˌpɪkəˈjun/ uncommon archaic informal us

adjective

1.

(informal) small and of little importance

  • “a fiddling sum of money”
  • “a footling gesture”
  • “our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war”
  • “a little (or small) matter”
  • “a dispute over niggling details”
  • “limited to petty enterprises”
  • “piffling efforts”
  • “giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction”
Synonyms
Similar

Origin

The noun is borrowed from southern French picaillon, pécaillon, picayon (“type of small foreign coin; (informal, especially in the plural) cash, money”), and from its etymon Occitan picalhon, picaioun (“cheaply made Savoyan-Piedmontese coin that was rapidly demonetized; (by extension) cash, money”), probably from Occitan piquar (“to ring (bells); to knock, strike”) (referring to the clinking of coins in a pocket), originally imitative. The adjective is derived from the noun.

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.