pissant

plural pissants · alternative piss-ant

1. dated outside dialectsAn ant.
2. derogatoryslangAn insignificant person.

   It is the beauty of well designed fascism that it gives every piss-ant an ant hill to piss from.

   1993, PJ O'Rourke, “Democracy in its diapers”, in Give War a Chance, Picador

   1 more example

   “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.”

   2005 January 24, Seymour M. Hersh, “The Coming Wars”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 25 Aug 2015, page 24

   Synonyms: nobody

3. derogatoryslangA person who adheres strictly to a rule or policy despite current circumstances.

   Their manager is a real pissant about break times.

4. derogatoryslangA person seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but the trivial, especially in the sense of trivial or irrelevant criticism.

comparative more pissant · superlative most pissant · alternative piss-ant

1. sometimesvulgarInsignificant or unimportant.

   ‘He was just this little pissant kid, Wallace.’

   2020, Brandon Taylor, Real Life, Daunt Books Originals, page 222

   2 more examples

   This is our chance to make a name for ourselves; to show that we're not just some piss-ant white-bread mountain town.

   1997 August 20, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, “Weight Gain 4000”, in South Park, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Mayor McDaniels (Mary Kay Bergman)

   A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through the city council.

   2003, Tony Kushner, Angels in America, spoken by Roy Cohn (Al Pacino)

   Synonyms: base, contemptible, floccinaucinihilipilificatious, foolish, for the birds, futile, frivolous, idle