Literary notes about paltry (AI summary)
In literature, "paltry" functions as a pointed descriptor for that which is meager, trivial, or unworthy of esteem. Writers employ the word to sharply contrast the insignificance or inadequacy of a person, object, or sum with loftier ideals and greater achievements. For instance, it diminishes the stature of a ruler whose actions are seen as barbarous rather than noble ([1]), and it critiques both the meager earnings of a clerk and the paltry budget of education, highlighting societal disparities ([2], [3]). The term also serves to belittle characters and actions—from the insult hurled at a knight to the dismissal of minor philanthropic contributions—thereby underscoring a broader disdain for what is seen as base or unimportant ([4], [5], [6], [7]).
- ‘Tis a paltry king in his ways with men of letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education?
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - I’d never get beyond a clerkship, and how could you and I be happy on the paltry earnings of a clerk?
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - I’ll pit him against that paltry creature, unless it bestir itself briskly.
— from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - “And to think, only to think that a man's life should be ruined for the sake of that paltry three thousand!” he cried, contemptuously.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - “Of course—but I didn’t know that $200,000 was so very paltry.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner - But what’s the good of saying what everybody knows? Instead of feeding nightingales with paltry words, you had much better tell me what I am to do.”
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
