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small fry

noun

Etymology

From small + fry, first use appears c. 1577, in the publications of John Dee.

  1. derived from fricō — “to rub”
  2. derived from froiz
  3. derived from *(s)per-✻
  4. derived from *fraiwą✻ — “seed, semen, offspring”
  5. derived from frjó — “seed, semen”
  6. inherited from frie — “spawn of fish, young or small fish, offspring, progeny, children”
  7. compounded as small fry — “small + fry”

Definitions

  1. One or more small or immature fish.

  2. One or more children.

  3. One or more relatively small and insignificant individuals or things of relatively little…

    One or more relatively small and insignificant individuals or things of relatively little consequence, importance, or value.

    • The police did not arrest the drug dealer since he was a small fry compared to his boss.
    • These slot machines are just the small fry. The big games are in the back room.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for small fry. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA