It's the Word of the Day podcast for December 9th.
Today's word is Paltry, spelled P-A-L-T-R-Y.
Paltry is an adjective.
It's a formal word that can describe something that is very small or too small in amount or something that has little meaning,
importance, or worth.
Here's the word used in a sentence from lithub.com by Ed Simon.
When the witty and rye English fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett interviewed Bill Gates for GQ in 1995,
only 39% of Americans had access to a home computer.
According to the Pew Research Center,
the number who were connected to the internet was a paltry 14%.
Before paltry was an adjective, it was a noun, meaning trash.
That now obsolete noun came from palt or pelt,
a dialect term referring to a piece of coarse cloth or, more broadly, to trash.
The adjective paltry, which dates to the mid-16th century,
originally described things considered worthless or a very low quality,
but it's gained a number of meanings over the centuries, none of which are complementary.
A paltry house might be neglected and unfit for occupancy.
A paltry trick is a trick that is low down and dirty.
A paltry excuse is a poor one and a paltry sum is small and insufficient.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.