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pittance
in a sentence

show 59 more with this conextual meaning
  • "The settlement was a pittance compared to what it would've been if they had filed a year later."†   (source)
  • Father is letting the lodges for a pittance.†   (source)
  • A pittance of what is to come!†   (source)
  • Your kind, all of you, think nothing of breaking our backs for a pittance.†   (source)
  • But it came at last, a few hundred pounds, a pittance set against what had been lost.†   (source)
  • And here comes an unguarded, solitary goblin wagon braving the Ravenswood Spur with a pittance of goods and asking for a private audience.†   (source)
  • You knew that your basic pittance would be given to you anyway, whether you worked or not-your 'housing and feeding allowance,' it was called-and above that pittance, you had no chance to get anything, no matter how hard you tried.†   (source)
  • Should we work for the sweater fourteen hours a day for a pittance?†   (source)
  • As a young man, when two of his friends who ran a little store came to the point of despondent bankruptcy, Will was asked to lend them a little money to tide them over the quarter's bills, and they gave him a one-third interest for a pittance.†   (source)
  • You try to lay a little pittance by, you put your money in the bank or you lend it out at a fair rate of interest, you build up a position of authority in the community, and along comes some ugly little wretch--†   (source)
  • Five years ago, after an attack, it had appeared as though he would either have to sacrifice his business on the auction block and live on a pittance thereafter or put himself at the mercy of some unscrupulous employee who would in the end probably ruin him.†   (source)
  • The sheep are selling me their homes and property for a pittance.†   (source)
  • It also made sense that he had used her mother as a front in the purchase and had then for a pittance bought back the property.†   (source)
  • But I've got nothing except the pittance you give me and …. and you might change your mind any time.†   (source)
  • And if you ever want to see pure evil, you should have seen the way her eyes glinted when she watched some man who'd talked back to her once and who'd just heard his name on the list of those getting nothing above basic pittance.†   (source)
  • The father came home and went into the dark room to give Lucia her daily food pittance.†   (source)
  • But this "temporary" state of things had gone on and on, the cost of living rose by leaps and bounds, and Grand's pay, in spite of some statutory rises, was still a mere pittance.†   (source)
  • No more lavish promises of perpetual virtue, I gather; not even the expectation of an endowment of "grace" for life, but only a hope for the daily and hourly pittance to meet the daily and hourly temptation!†   (source)
  • Jurgis walked home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket, heartbroken, overwhelmed.†   (source)
  • That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the children brought him.†   (source)
  • How the deuce am I to keep up my position in the world upon such a pitiful pittance?†   (source)
  • You have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold.†   (source)
  • The widow must live on her slender pittance, or on such aid as Jos could give her.†   (source)
  • I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved.†   (source)
  • Robert is very well in a way, to give up all the money he can earn to the family, and keep the barest pittance for himself.†   (source)
  • That obligation discharged, she would have but a thousand dollars of Mrs. Peniston's legacy left, and nothing to live on but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gerty Farish's wretched pittance; but this consideration gave way to the imperative claim of her wounded pride.†   (source)
  • The subscription is but ten dollars a year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the monthly magazine, Pearls of Healing, but the privilege of sending right to the president, our revered Mother Dobbs, any questions regarding spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and well-being questions, financial difficulties, and—†   (source)
  • It is evident, therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty would have had a mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to a very serious extent.†   (source)
  • Without the addition of her grandmother's allowance it was hardly enough to live on, in any sense known to the Mingott vocabulary; and now that Medora Manson, who shared her life, had been ruined, such a pittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed.†   (source)
  • There was something heroic about this gently-bred woman enduring our terrible hardship and with her pittance of strength bending to the tasks of a peasant woman.†   (source)
  • Both Jonas and Marija might soon be earning no more than enough to pay their board, and besides that there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the little boy.†   (source)
  • Her mother was an old, old woman, and they used to sell string and thread, and soap and tobacco, out of the window of their little house, and lived on the pittance they gained by this trade.†   (source)
  • There was no choice about this—whatever work there was to be done they had to do, if they wished to keep their places; besides that, it added another pittance to their incomes.†   (source)
  • It brought some pittance to the miserable penitent from time to time, looked through the hole to see whether he were still living, forgot his name, hardly knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to the stranger, who questioned them about the living skeleton who was perishing in that cellar, the neighbors replied simply, "It is the recluse."†   (source)
  • ' "The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered into the service of — HEEP," ' always pausing before that word and uttering it with astonishing vigour, ' "were not defined, beyond the pittance of twenty-two shillings and six per week.†   (source)
  • She hailed the arrival of Saturday night, as a prisoner would a few delicious hours' respite from slow and wearing torture, and felt that the poor pittance for her first week's labour would have been dearly and hardly earned, had its amount been trebled.†   (source)
  • …of the sun—as to those fellows, who meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of knowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of their lives, their long study, and their expensive education with pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in Surgeons' Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order that its younger members might understand from…†   (source)
  • I am sure my father will subscribe much of his little pittance, to place him in a station that is more worthy of him.†   (source)
  • It has not been safe for me to go near my house; and, with a beggar's pittance in my pocket, I have walked through vile mud and weather ever since, until my feet are crippled—look at them!†   (source)
  • They receive from the Danish Government a ridiculously small pittance, and they get from the parish the fourth part of the tithe, which does not come to sixty marks a year (about 4 pounds).†   (source)
  • Ten young descendants of Marius and the Gracchi, barefooted and out at elbows, with one hand resting on the hip and the other gracefully curved above the head, stared at the traveller, the post-chaise, and the horses; to these were added about fifty little vagabonds from the Papal States, who earned a pittance by diving into the Tiber at high water from the bridge of St. Angelo.†   (source)
  • It has pleased Our Lady and my patron saint to bless the pittance to which I restrain myself, even as the pulse and water was blessed to the children Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, who drank the same rather than defile themselves with the wine and meats which were appointed them by the King of the Saracens.†   (source)
  • You allowed me a meagre salary of five hundred roubles a year, a beggar's pittance, and have never even thought of adding a rouble to it.†   (source)
  • She procured plain work; she plaited straw and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life.†   (source)
  • As it was, I lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave, so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men.†   (source)
  • If when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the newspapers—when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the advertisements of my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give me a lift with my little pittance— if at that time you could have helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you."†   (source)
  • Setting their Grubbers on, at a wretched pittance, to do what they're ashamed and afraid to do and pretend not to do, but what they will have done, or give a man no rest!†   (source)
  • Ay, sir,' he continued, bending eagerly forward, and addressing Nicholas, as he marked the change of his countenance, 'to restore a parent his child; his son, sir; trepanned, waylaid, and guarded at every turn by you, with the base design of robbing him some day of any little wretched pittance of which he might become possessed.'†   (source)
  • Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.†   (source)
  • Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find some means of increasing the small pittance upon which the household is starving.†   (source)
  • Her own pittance was so small that it would barely enable her to support her parents and would not suffice to give George the advantages which were his due.†   (source)
  • Think of an honest cottage spinner balancing weight in one pan of the scales and wool yarn on the other, trying to earn a pittance for her children: evenly poised as that were these great powers making war, until at last Lord Zeus conferred on Hektor, Priam's son, the glory of bursting through the Akhaian wall.†   (source)
  • I'm proud to boast his blood, that man
    revered like a god throughout all Crete those days,
    for wealth, power and all his glorious offspring.
    But the deadly spirits soon swept him down
    to the House of Death, and his high and mighty sons
    carved up his lands and then cast lots for the parts
    and gave me just a pittance, a paltry house as well.
    But I won myself a wife from wealthy, landed people,
    thanks to my own strong points.†   (source)
  • The worst is this, that at so slender warning You are like to have a thin and slender pittance.†   (source)
  • He was an easy man to give penance, *There as he wist to have a good pittance:* *where he know he would For unto a poor order for to give get good payment* Is signe that a man is well y-shrive.†   (source)
  • As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge.†   (source)
  • She then betook herself to the business of packing, for which a small quantity of brown paper sufficed, and, having received her small pittance of wages, she returned home.†   (source)
  • He said, "he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very…†   (source)
  • In reality, he was so generous a man, that, whereas he had received a very handsome fortune with his wife, he had now spent every penny of it, except some little pittance which was settled upon her; and, in order to possess himself of this, he had used her with such cruelty, that, together with his jealousy, which was of the bitterest kind, it had forced the poor woman to run away from him.†   (source)
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