petty

My doctor said he would retest my levels in a couple of weeks to be sure it wasn’t a mistake, which frankly seemed petty to me.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026

Trade bible Variety called it a "lacerating portrait," while Deadline said the "damning" film had "thrashed" Musk as "petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel."

From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026

The Angels called it petty, and they searched for a home they could call their own.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026

Characters forced to make do either lash out, like raging overreactors on Lee Sung Jin’s petty, brutal “Beef,” or fall into holding patterns, like the unlucky in love leads of Issa Rae’s dramedy “Insecure.”

From Salon ● Aug. 30, 2026

It has never been determined whether his assassin, a white petty criminal named James Earl Ray, acted alone, as he claimed, or as part of a conspiracy.

From "Because They Marched" by Russell Freedman

“If I find him annoying, that means that maybe I’m going to come in a little bit pettier than usual,” says Martin.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2024

Listen, I’m sure there will be a lot of sturm und drang about what the whistleblower disclosures mean for Elon Musk’s Twitter deal, but I want to focus on something dumber and pettier: Jack Dorsey.

From The Verge ● Aug. 23, 2022

But because Doncic is an NBA all-star, his true intent probably was pettier — an insinuation that the refs were on the Suns’ payroll.

From Washington Post ● May 10, 2022

Some of his fellow pros and some of the lords of the game don’t like DeChambeau for other, pettier reasons.

From Slate ● Apr. 7, 2021

He did not care to be absent from the center of political life, and felt himself to be at once superior to and unfitted for the pettier affairs of a provincial government.

From Roman life in the days of Cicero by Alfred John Church

It’s elementary: Characters can do outlandish things, commit outrageous crimes, be inspired by the pettiest of motives.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 30, 2025

Furst insisted no topic is off the table, from the pettiest accusation to the most serious charge.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 21, 2023

And as days of isolation cascaded this spring and we navigated radically narrowed options, we became our most immature, our wisest, our pettiest, our most magnanimous—sometimes in the space of a heartbeat.

From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2020

Voters overwhelmingly approved the change to the three-strikes law, swayed in part by tales of inmates with nonviolent histories serving life terms for the pettiest of crimes, such as stealing a pair of socks.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 16, 2014

This had he come from Paris to tell—this was the news that Richard Gessner heard with less apparent emotion than though one had told him of the pettiest event of a common day.

From Aladdin of London or, Lodestar by Sir Max Pemberton