paltry

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 9, 2025 is:

paltry • \PAWL-tree\  • adjective

Paltry is a formal word that can describe something that is very small or too small in amount, or something that has little meaning, importance, or worth.

// They're offering a paltry salary for the position.

// The professor announced they'd finally had enough of the students' paltry excuses for being late to class.

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Examples:

"When the witty and wry English fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett interviewed Bill Gates for GQ in 1995, only 39% of Americans had access to a home computer. According to the Pew Research Center, the number who were connected to the internet was a paltry 14%." — Ed Simon, LitHub.com, 25 Nov. 2024

Did you know?

Before paltry was an adjective, it was a noun meaning trash. That now-obsolete noun came from palt or pelt, a dialect term referring to a piece of coarse cloth, or more broadly, to trash. The adjective paltry, which dates to the mid-16th century, originally described things considered worthless, or of very low quality, but it's gained a number of meanings over the centuries, none of which are complimentary. A paltry house might be neglected and unfit for occupancy; a paltry trick is a trick that is low-down and dirty; a paltry excuse is a poor one; and a paltry sum is small and insufficient.