How to Use petty in a Sentence

petty

adjective
  • My behavior was petty and stupid. I apologize.
  • Skarsgård plays a young petty thief who jacks a car.
    — Brian Truitt, USA Today, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Neely dropped out of school and got caught up in petty crime.
    — CBS News, 5 Oct. 2019
  • These can be petty but hard to avoid today.
    — Georgia Nicols, Denver Post, 15 Oct. 2025
  • Emails have piled up and my phone is abuzz with petty gossip.
    — Sarah Gillespie, Travel + Leisure, 15 May 2023
  • No, all of you did this solely for the cheap thrill of petty theft.
    — Nate Odenkirk, The New Yorker, 28 Dec. 2021
  • Or choose the petty path and appeal it which we were prepared for.
    — John Lynch, Arkansas Online, 22 Oct. 2025
  • So there was none of that petty stuff that was there from the beginning.
    — Rosy Cordero, EW.com, 12 Sep. 2019
  • This is more than just petty high-school behaviour to be brushed off.
    — Orianna Rosa Royle, Fortune, 1 Feb. 2026
  • Choose to let go of harmless slights and petty conflicts.
    — Los Angeles Times, 13 Jan. 2026
  • But that had all been chipped away by petty jealousies and vicious fights.
    — refinery29.com, 13 Apr. 2022
  • There were deep convos, petty fights, and sky-high heels galore.
    — Korin Miller, Women's Health, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Paramount+, and from the looks of the first full trailer, things get real petty quick.
    — Kristen Baldwin, EW.com, 26 Feb. 2021
  • Still, these last two months the forum seems to be littered with petty news from the home front.
    — Rachel Levin, SFChronicle.com, 3 June 2020
  • These people are so childish and petty.
    — U T Readers, San Diego Union-Tribune, 28 Jan. 2026
  • The petty put-downs were sharper on Palm Royale.
    — Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 16 June 2026
  • For power users, this sort of thing can’t help but read as needling, even petty platform quirks.
    — Eric Vilas-Boas, Vulture, 10 Apr. 2026
  • But healing wounds appears to be too much for the bitter and the petty.
    — Robert Gehrke, The Salt Lake Tribune, 11 Nov. 2020
  • The knifes range from the wee (petty and paring knives) to the grand (cleavers and vegetable knives).
    — Scott Hocker, theweek, 1 Nov. 2024
  • By his teenage years, King had advanced from petty theft to burglary.
    — Tim Prudente, baltimoresun.com, 5 Dec. 2019
  • One person shared their own petty revenge story from a decade ago.
    — Maria Morava, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 Sep. 2025
  • This isn’t to say the vigilante trans group in the new world is free of petty catfights.
    — Grace Byron, Vulture, 11 Mar. 2025
  • As long as there have been people, there have been petty complaints about people.
    — Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 27 June 2026
  • Or, in this case, about science and not the petty problems of earthlings.
    — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 9 July 2024
  • Drake, being Drake, of course, still got off a handful of petty jabs.
    — Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 25 Nov. 2024
  • The second lists all the hassles and headaches of your job, from the petty to the systemic.
    — David G. Allan, CNN, 6 Sep. 2021
  • Both men are charged with petty theft, according to the police.
    — Bruce Geiselman, cleveland, 5 Dec. 2021
  • For some of them, that means driving down petty crime at places central to their daily lives.
    — Paul Duggan, Washington Post, 28 July 2023
  • Who is not petty or vindictive.
    — Chicago Tribune, 2 Jan. 2026
  • And then there is a tinge of shame for feeling it because it’s viewed as a petty, base emotion.
    — Andrea Kane, CNN, 17 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'petty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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