English Dictionary

PITTANCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pittance mean? 

PITTANCE (noun)
  The noun PITTANCE has 1 sense:

1. an inadequate paymentplay

  Familiarity information: PITTANCE used as a noun is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


PITTANCE (noun)


Sense 1

Meaning:

An inadequate payment

Classified under:

Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession

Context example:

they work all day for a mere pittance

Hypernyms ("pittance" is a kind of...):

payment (a sum of money paid or a claim discharged)


 Context examples 


As it was, I lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave, so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It is evident, therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty would have had a mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to a very serious extent.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There was something heroic about this gently-bred woman enduring our terrible hardship and with her pittance of strength bending to the tasks of a peasant woman.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

His estates were confiscated, and I was left with a pittance and a broken heart.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered into the service of—HEEP, always pausing before that word and uttering it with astonishing vigour, were not defined, beyond the pittance of twenty-two shillings and six per week.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She procured plain work; she plaited straw and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He said, “he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions; that, as to myself, it was manifest I had neither the strength nor agility of a common Yahoo; that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather: lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my brethren,” as he called them, “the Yahoos in his country.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"Life's a bleach and then you dye." (English proverb)

"A fire should be extinguished when it is small; an enemy should be subdued while young." (Bhutanese proverb)

"Three people can make up a tiger." (Chinese proverb)

"Even the king saves his money." (Corsican proverb)



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