picayune
in a sentence

Let's not get distracted by picayune matters.
picayune = trivial (small and of little importance)

giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction

Before, it had seemed picayune to get all bent out of shape organizing the household chores. (source)
picayune = petty (to focus on unimportant things)

Finally, in April of 2007, Kathy wrote a letter to the Times-Picayune detailing the saga of the trailer.† (source) Dave Eggers, Zeitoun, 2009

Was your company also sued last month by a New Orleans bank known as Picayune Trust for $2.† (source) John Grisham, Sycamore Row, 2014

The New Orleans Times Picayune ran a large derisive front-page story with a thick black headline: TAPPANISM!† (source) Alexs Pate, Amistad, 1997

And the New Orleans Picayune hailed Webster for "the moral courage to do what he believes to be just in itself and necessary for the peace and safety of the country."† (source)

If he was not pleased he could get work at any time on the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Louisville Courier Journal, the Atlanta Constitution, the Knoxville Sentinel, the Norfolk Pilot.† (source)

…and great-grandsons springing as far as eye could reach; he still, even though dead in the earth, that same fine figure of a man that Wash Jones called him, but not now Now fogbound by his own private embattlement of personal morality: that picayune splitting of abstract hairs while (Grandfather said) Rome vanished and Jericho crumbled, that this would be right if or that would be wrong but of slowing blood and stiffening bones and arteries that Father says men resort to in senility…† (source)

show 11 more with this conextual meaning

"There's a picayune for you to buy candy with, Dodo," said Henrique; "go get some."† (source)

"Just one thing—I don't ask you to think of your family or friends, because I know they don't count a picayune with you beside your sense of duty—but, Burne, how do you know that the magazines you read and the societies you join and these idealists you meet aren't just plain _German?† (source)

So he felt a moment; and then he smoked a cigar, and read the Picayune, and forgot his little gospel.† (source)

A writer in the "New Orleans Picayune," in a careful historical paper, explained at length that I had been mistaken all the way through, that Philip Nolan never went to sea, but to Texas.† (source)

"I can learn what does me as much good as that from the Picayune, any time, and smoke a cigar besides; which I can't do, you know, in a church."† (source)

From him she got many a stray picayune, which she laid out in nuts and candies, and distributed, with careless generosity, to all the children in the family; for Topsy, to do her justice, was good-natured and liberal, and only spiteful in self-defence.† (source)

Other, and less respectable contributions of the time are /brash/, /brainy/, /peart/, /locoed/, /pesky/, /picayune/, /scary/, /well-heeled/, /hardshell/ (/e. g./, Baptist), /low-flung/, /codfish/ (to indicate opprobrium) and /go-to-meeting/.† (source)

From the Canadian French, as we have already seen, /prairie/, /batteau/, /portage/ and /rapids/ had been borrowed during colonial days; to these French contributions /bayou/, /picayune/, /levee/, /chute/, /butte/, /crevasse/, and /lagniappe/ were now added, and probably also /shanty/ and /canuck/.† (source)

The American language, as we have seen, has begun to take in the English /boot/ and /shop/, and it is showing hospitality to /head-master/, /haberdasher/ and /week-end/, but /subaltern/, /civil servant/, /porridge/, /moor/, /draper/, /treacle/, /tram/ and /mufti/ are still strangers in the United States, as /bleachers/, /picayune/, /air-line/, /campus/, /chore/, /scoot/, /stogie/ and /hoodoo/ are in England.† (source)

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picayunein a sentence