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puny

[pyoo-nee] / ˈpju ni /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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To achieve a similar impact, Johnson appears to be wearing a muscular silicone suit over his 6-foot-5 frame, but the extra padding just makes his head look puny.

From Los Angeles Times Jul. 9, 2026

More often, he is a reckoning, reminding us of how puny we are in nature’s schemes.

From Salon Mar. 20, 2026

Sticking with puny but potent items: Lego unveiled its Smart Play system, which incorporates bricks stuffed with mini computers.

From The Wall Street Journal Jan. 11, 2026

Some senior Labour figures fret privately that their talk of "missions" and a "Plan for Change" might seem puny to many in comparison with the scale of that challenge.

From BBC Mar. 13, 2025

A puny arrow connects the filler who with a gap right next door, and the reader gets instant gratification: no sooner does she come across who than she knows what it’s doing.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

Others proposed that the dots represented constellations of a much punier scale: molecules, perhaps the biosignatures of the foreign home world.

From Scientific American Aug. 3, 2023

But day by day, throughout the study’s 70 days, the inactive controls grew less fit and punier.

From Washington Post Nov. 30, 2022

And since, as mentioned before, those set pieces are nothing but CGI-fests, it means that we're shortchanging on the heart of the movie to move to muscle that is much punier than the filmmakers realize.

From Salon Apr. 12, 2019

The founder’s grandson Kim Jong-un is a punier figure, politically speaking.

From The Guardian Jul. 3, 2015

He could see them in their leather flight jackets, their dark mantles, having just come down from doing things that smaller, punier men could never do, doing things that only gods could do.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy

But I am often the puniest person in the room, and it’s getting worse.

From Washington Post Feb. 11, 2020

It pleases me, though, when I’m in Tucson to drive up Broadway and park the rental just to conduct my insignificant banking in a building that seems to frame and elevate the puniest of transactions.

From New York Times Jun. 12, 2015

During the 2011-12 regular season, teams committed 19.6 fouls per game, the puniest amount in NBA history.

From Slate Jun. 6, 2012

The confluence of balmy temperatures and boring pictures led to the puniest Memorial Day box-office total since 2001, and, as the stats-mashers at Hollywood.com note, the fewest tickets sold since 1993.

From Time May 31, 2010

I have given to his own emotion the puniest name I could find for it; I have no nobler name for his intellect. 

From Hearts of Controversy by Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell




Vocabulary lists containing puny


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