petit

/ˈpɛti/US/ˈpɛtət/

petit adjective: petite: small, little.

Adjective

petit (comparative more petit, superlative most petit)

(uncommon) Petite: small, little.
- And by what small, petit Hints does the Mind catch hold of, and recover a vanishing Notion?1684 or 1685 February 22, Robert South, A Sermon preached at Westminster-Abbey
(obsolete) Few in number.
(uncommon) Unimportant; cheap; easily replaced.
Small, minor.
(archaic) Secondary; lower in rank.

Noun (1)

petit (plural petits)

(obsolete, plural-normally) A little schoolboy.
(obsolete, rare) A kind of pigeon.

Noun (2)

petit (uncountable)

(dated, French and German contexts) Synonym of brevier.

Synonyms:

brevier

Proper noun capitalized: Petit

Petit

A surname.

petit meaning in Urdu and Malayalam

Examples of petit in a sentence

On nous apporta du thé, du riz et des mantous – des petits pains de farine de blé.
Stuff his face full of petit gâteau.
The seabass rice (€16) is the bestseller, and don’t miss the dessert of carob petit gateau, fig ice-cream and reduction of Carcavelos wine.

All 10 example sentences with petit

Synonyms of petit

brevier

Forms of petit

Adjective
comparative	more petit
superlative	most petit
Noun
plural	petits

Origin of petit

From Middle English petit, from Old French petit, from Late Latin *pitittus, diminutive of Latin *pit-, possibly from Proto-Celtic *pett- (“part, bit, piece”) (see Latin pettia), or of imitative origin. Compare also Latin pitinnus (“small”), pitulus, Italian pezza. Doublet of petty.

From French petit (“brevier”) directly or via German Petit (“brevier”).

From French Petit.

Words formed from petit

petit bag
petit bourgeois
petit bribing
petit-bribing
petit canon
petit cape
petit captain
petit chapman
petit constable
petit custom
petit final
petit god
petit juror
petit jury
petit larceny
petit maître
petit morel
petit officer
petit pâté
petit sergeant
petit sergeanty
petit serjeanty
petit session
petit souper
petit treason

Phrases with petit

Questions about petit

What does petit mean?: Petit means petite: small, little.
What is petit in Urdu?: Petit in Urdu is ذرا (zarā). See Petit meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is petit?: Petit can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce petit?: Petit is pronounced /ˈpɛti/ (UK).

Words near petit in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: petit (page history and authors); Petit (page history and authors); ذرا (Urdu) (page history and authors); petit (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-petit.wav.

Cite this entry: “petit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/petit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.