See pissant in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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"(dated outside dialects) An ant."
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "1993, PJ O'Rourke, “Democracy in its diapers”, in Give War a Chance, Picador:",
"text": "It is the beauty of well designed fascism that it gives every piss-ant an ant hill to piss from.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2005 January 24, Seymour M. Hersh, “The Coming Wars”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 2015-08-25, page 24:",
"text": "“Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”",
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],
"glosses": [
"An insignificant person."
],
"id": "en-pissant-en-noun-pi5JTahG",
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"derogatory",
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],
[
"insignificant",
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(derogatory) An insignificant person."
],
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"word": "nobody"
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},
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"examples": [
{
"text": "Their manager is a real pissant about break times.",
"type": "example"
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],
"glosses": [
"A person who adheres strictly to a rule or policy despite current circumstances."
],
"id": "en-pissant-en-noun-SrSnYCLW",
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"(derogatory) A person who adheres strictly to a rule or policy despite current circumstances."
],
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"glosses": [
"A person seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but the trivial, especially in the sense of trivial or irrelevant criticism."
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"id": "en-pissant-en-noun-ZY5274Du",
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"(derogatory) A person seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but the trivial, especially in the sense of trivial or irrelevant criticism."
],
"tags": [
"derogatory"
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],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈpɪsænt/"
},
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-pissant.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/03/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-pissant.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-pissant.wav.mp3",
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"form": "more pissant",
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},
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{
"ref": "1997 August 20, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, “Weight Gain 4000”, in South Park, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Mayor McDaniels:",
"text": "This is our chance to make a name for ourselves; to show that we're not just some piss-ant white-bread mountain town.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Tony Kushner, Angels in America, spoken by Roy Cohn (Al Pacino):",
"text": "A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through the city council.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020, Brandon Taylor, Real Life, Daunt Books Originals, page 222:",
"text": "‘He was just this little pissant kid, Wallace.’",
"type": "quote"
}
],
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"Insignificant or unimportant."
],
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"(sometimes vulgar) Insignificant or unimportant."
],
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"glosses": [
"An ant."
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"(dated outside dialects) An ant."
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"ref": "1993, PJ O'Rourke, “Democracy in its diapers”, in Give War a Chance, Picador:",
"text": "It is the beauty of well designed fascism that it gives every piss-ant an ant hill to piss from.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2005 January 24, Seymour M. Hersh, “The Coming Wars”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 2015-08-25, page 24:",
"text": "“Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”",
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"An insignificant person."
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"(derogatory) An insignificant person."
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"A person who adheres strictly to a rule or policy despite current circumstances."
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"(derogatory) A person who adheres strictly to a rule or policy despite current circumstances."
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"(derogatory) A person seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but the trivial, especially in the sense of trivial or irrelevant criticism."
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],
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"ipa": "/ˈpɪsænt/"
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"word": "pissant"
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"forms": [
{
"form": "more pissant",
"tags": [
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]
},
{
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{
"ref": "1997 August 20, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, “Weight Gain 4000”, in South Park, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Mayor McDaniels:",
"text": "This is our chance to make a name for ourselves; to show that we're not just some piss-ant white-bread mountain town.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Tony Kushner, Angels in America, spoken by Roy Cohn (Al Pacino):",
"text": "A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through the city council.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020, Brandon Taylor, Real Life, Daunt Books Originals, page 222:",
"text": "‘He was just this little pissant kid, Wallace.’",
"type": "quote"
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],
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"(sometimes vulgar) Insignificant or unimportant."
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],
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}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "piss-ant"
}
],
"word": "pissant"
}
Download raw JSONL data for pissant meaning in English (5.4kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-10 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (df33d17 and 4ed51a5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.