Pittance

English

Noun

Pittance (plural Pittances)

1. A small allowance of food and drink; a scanty meal.
2. A meagre allowance of money or wages.
   • 1898, J. Meade Falkner , Moonfleet Chapter 5

     So I went to keep house with him at the Why Not? and my aunt sent down my bag of clothes, and would have made over to Elzevir the pittance that my father left for my keep, but he said it was not needful, and he would have none of it.

3. A small amount.

Adjectives for Pittance

slender; remaining; contemptible; meager; trifling; bare; worthless; welcome.

Verbs for Pittance

acquire—; allot—; allow—; beg—; derive—; dole out—; donate—; drain—; draw—; exist on—; live on—; provide—; solicit—; yield—; —contents; —suffices.

Thesaurus

ace, alms, alms fee, atom, bit, charity, collection, contribution, dab, dole, donation, donative, dot, dram, dribble, driblet, dwarf, farthing, fleck, flyspeck, fragment, gobbet, grain, granule, groat, hair, half rations, handful, handout, inadequacy, insufficiency, iota, jot, little, little bit, mere subsistence, minim, minimum, minutiae, mite, modicum, molecule, mote, nutshell, offering, offertory, ounce, particle, peanuts, pebble, pinch, point, scrap, scrimption, scruple, shoestring, short allowance, short commons, small potatoes, smidgen, smitch, speck, spoonful, spot, starvation wages, subscription, thimbleful, tiny bit, tithe, tittle, trace, trifling amount, trivia, votive offering, whit

Etymology

From Latin pietantia

Translations

• Finnish: mitätön summa (fi)
• Spanish: miseria (es) f.
• Dutch: schijntje (nl) n.