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View synonyms for small beer

small beer

noun

  1. weak beer.
  2. Chiefly British Slang. matters or persons of little or no importance.


small beer

noun

  1. informal.
    people or things of no importance
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Word History and Origins

Origin of small beer1

First recorded in 1560–70
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Idioms and Phrases

Also, small potatoes . Of little importance, as in Don't listen to Henry; he's small beer , or It's silly to worry about that bill; it's small potatoes . The first term alludes to a beer of low alcoholic content (also called light beer today) and was used metaphorically by Shakespeare in several plays. The variant may have been invented by frontiersman Davy Crockett; it was first recorded in 1836. Also see small fry , def. 2.
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Example Sentences

In the Czech Republic, beer often comes as a snyt, a small beer priced accordingly low, served with a big head in a big glass.

Drinking lots of small beers also means that staying for one extra is marginally less likely to be catastrophic, as you aren’t committing to two or three extra units of alcohol or another chunk of cash.

All this is small beer compared with the supergrass that BCL Burton Copeland may turn out to be.

Like most of our public figures and celebrities, our “most wanted” criminals are small beer.

The sour Medoc was sparingly drunk, mixed with sugar and water; some drank home-brewed small beer, the majority only water.

There was something superb in it, something heroically mad—not the sordid drunkenness of small beer.

He seemed but half awake; and it was with drowsy voice that he called for a cup of cold small beer.

The stump of a cabbage, and the proverb means much the same thing as "Spare no expense, bring another bottle of small beer."

As often as I called for small-beer, the master tipped the wink, and the servant brought me a brimmer of October.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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