How to Use pittance in a Sentence

pittance

noun
  • Might seem a pittance now, but, back then, a lot of you lost your minds.
    — Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 7 Mar. 2021
  • Brain fog might be a pittance of cloudiness and barely gets in your way.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 24 Nov. 2024
  • That’s a pittance for a guy whose Statcast page is a sea of red ink.
    — Phil Rogers, Forbes, 2 Oct. 2024
  • But that’s just a pittance of the overall burden.
    — Editorial, Boston Herald, 18 Apr. 2026
  • The only price to pay is a fair amount of clouds and a stray shower, a pittance.
    — Washington Post, 3 Mar. 2022
  • That £30million fee now looks like a pittance for someone that good.
    — The Athletic Staff, The Athletic, 12 Aug. 2024
  • But the new funding is a pittance compared to some of his rivals.
    — Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2026
  • But that aid may prove to be a pittance to what lawmakers are now lining up.
    — Tom Benning, Dallas News, 20 Mar. 2020
  • That means the millions who had their data hijacked but not yet abused could get a pittance.
    — Hiawatha Bray, BostonGlobe.com, 30 July 2019
  • Banks are paying a pittance on deposits, but customers don’t seem to care.
    — Orla McCaffrey, WSJ, 12 Nov. 2020
  • Her next check will be a pittance, the rent is already overdue, and there are no savings.
    — Matt Sedensky, The Seattle Times, 3 Sep. 2017
  • That could be a pittance compared to the number of flowers at their wedding.
    — Pete Grathoff, Kansas City Star, 29 Jan. 2026
  • Time and again, the money extracted from the tech giants amounts to a pittance.
    — Wired, 4 Sep. 2019
  • The point isn’t that Starbucks workers, or anyone, should make a pittance.
    — Erik Sherman, Forbes, 27 Jan. 2023
  • Heck, 20 years from now, $28 million in earnings might seem like a pittance.
    — Art Wilson, Orange County Register, 2 Feb. 2017
  • On the other hand, Armstrong got out this mess for a relative pittance.
    — Bill Gifford, Outside Online, 20 Apr. 2018
  • The idea is that the tribe would only be taxed on the selling price, a pittance compared to the land’s current value.
    — Lynette Rice, Deadline, 15 Dec. 2024
  • The current ones are catching a pittance of the overall heat-trapping emissions.
    — Ken Silverstein, Forbes, 6 June 2021
  • The government filed suit and offered a pittance for the property.
    — Ephrat Livni, Quartz, 13 Feb. 2020
  • That’s a pittance compared to some streaming shows, which cost upwards of $20 million per hour.
    — Josef Adalian, Vulture, 27 Mar. 2025
  • When Leonard Green made its third attempt to exit, the nominal price was a pittance.
    — Peter Elkind, ProPublica, 30 Sep. 2020
  • And in class-action suits like what the plaintiffs are seeking, claimants usually collect a pittance next to what the lawyers take in.
    — WSJ, 25 Dec. 2018
  • Programs like the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho shrank to a pittance.
    — Stephania Taladrid, The New Yorker, 12 Apr. 2022
  • The game show’s promise of small-scale wealth for the very few is replaced by HQ’s promise of a pittance for the few.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 22 Dec. 2017
  • Allen described $60 billion as a pittance for one of the largest industries in the country.
    — Priscilla Totiyapungprasert, The Arizona Republic, 21 Oct. 2021
  • Like most survey sites, YouGov pays a relative pittance for your opinions.
    — Kathy Kristof, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Compared to the billions of dollars poured into Covid vaccines, the funds for malaria are a pittance.
    — Apoorva Mandavilli Kang-Chun Cheng, New York Times, 4 Oct. 2022
  • The show’s six hours were a pittance compared to the all-day LiveAid, but still pretty massive for a nighttime event.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 31 Jan. 2025
  • Cacao is mostly grown in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, where farmers are often paid a pittance for their crops.
    — WIRED, 6 Nov. 2023
  • But the members of the council for that city of nearly half a million people are still paid a pittance — $6,250 a year.
    — John Aguilar, Denver Post, 14 July 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pittance.' 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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