ADJECTIVE
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(informal) small and of little importance
our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war
giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction
a little (or small) matter
limited to petty enterprises
a fiddling sum of money
piffling efforts
piffling efforts
a footling gesture
a dispute over niggling details
How To Use footling In A Sentence
- JUNO [huffily] I don't know what you call footling -- Overruled
- Don't abuse the privilege of having my cell number by wasting my valuable time on this kind of footling nonsense.
- He lists the erosion of liberty with enough precision to make objections to his flippancy seem footling (and based on straightforward political hostility).
- He could always do something useful instead of wasting my time with footling queries.
- As for the British people and their footling objections to this most wonderful of treaties, why, a pox on them! Archive 2008-01-20
- Yet here we are, hours later, arguing footling amendments, ridiculously trivial rubbish, that the so-called famous chairman of the select committee, all on his own behalf, changes the number, and all the rest of it.
- Another is the footling size of the fines: 5 million is the record. Times, Sunday Times
- It is hard and almost footling to attempt comment on such experiences. Times, Sunday Times
- As a theological conclusion this is pleasantly orthodox; as poetry it seems footling. The Times Literary Supplement
- Yet the freedoms which Englishmen have won over nearly eight hundred years have now been sold to a couple of Labour fellow-travellers for their votes so that the UK will now soften its policy towards Cuba and the issue of the all too footling sanctions against Cuba the EU maintains as a fig-leaf. Brown's Payola Goverment Dips Into the Pork Barrel
