pissant
/ˈpɪsænt/
pissant noun: an ant.
Noun
pissant (plural pissants)
- An ant.
- An insignificant person.
- It is the beauty of well designed fascism that it gives every piss-ant an ant hill to piss from.1993, PJ O'Rourke, “Democracy in its diapers”, in Give War a Chance, Picador
- “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the...2005 January 24, Seymour M. Hersh, “The Coming Wars”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 25 Aug 2015, page 24
- Synonyms:
- nobody
- A person who adheres strictly to a rule or policy despite current circumstances.
- Their manager is a real pissant about break times.
- A person seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but the trivial, especially in the sense of trivial or irrelevant criticism.
Adjective
pissant (comparative more pissant, superlative most pissant)
- Insignificant or unimportant.
- This is our chance to make a name for ourselves; to show that we're not just some piss-ant white-bread mountain town.1997 August 20, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, “Weight Gain 4000”, in South Park, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Mayor McDaniels (Mary Kay Bergman)
- A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through the city council.2003, Tony Kushner, Angels in America, spoken by Roy Cohn (Al Pacino)
- Synonyms:
- base, contemptible, floccinaucinihilipilificatious, foolish, for the birds, futile, frivolous, idle, ignorable, immaterial
Examples of pissant in a sentence
- We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”2005 January 24, Seymour M. Hersh, “The Coming Wars”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 25 Aug 2015, page 24:
- ‘He was just this little pissant kid, Wallace.’2020, Brandon Taylor, Real Life, Daunt Books Originals, page 222:
Synonyms of pissant
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of pissant
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | pissants |
| alternative form | piss-ant |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more pissant |
| superlative | most pissant |
Origin of pissant
From piss + ant, because of the urine-like smell of anthills. Compare pismire.
Questions about pissant
- What does pissant mean?
- Pissant means an ant.
- How do you use pissant in a sentence?
- We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”
- What part of speech is pissant?
- Pissant can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce pissant?
- Pissant is pronounced /ˈpɪsænt/.
- What is the plural of pissant?
- The plural of pissant is pissants.
Words near pissant in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pissant (page history and authors). 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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-pissant.wav.
Cite this entry: “pissant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pissant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.