"When the witty and wry 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 [ˈpɔltri] 14%." — Ed Simon, LitHub.com, 25 Nov. 2024

paltry
adj [ˈpɔltri]

Formal word that can describe something that is very small or too small in amount, or something that has little meaning, importance, or worth.

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 of very low quality...

English