Word.ws English Dictionary

spit in the ocean

spit in the ocean noun: a very small or insignificant amount; something of little importance.

Noun

spit in the ocean (countable and uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) A very small or insignificant amount; something of little importance.
    • Lawrence Venuti, a translator and author of The Translator's Invisibility, said that, beyond high-profile bestsellers, translations in the UK and US were still "a spit in the ocean" compared with countries such as Spain, France or Italy.2014 August 24, Dalya Alberge, “British readers lost in translations as foreign literature sales boom”, in The Observer
  2. (uncountable) A variety of poker involving an extra dealt card shared by all players.

Synonyms of spit in the ocean

12 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of spit in the ocean

Questions about spit in the ocean

What does spit in the ocean mean?
Spit in the ocean means a very small or insignificant amount; something of little importance.
What part of speech is spit in the ocean?
Spit in the ocean is a noun.

Words near spit in the ocean in the dictionary

  1. spit guard
  2. spit guards
  3. spit hood
  4. spit hoods
  5. spit in someone's face
  6. spit in the ocean
  7. spit in the wind
  8. spit into the wind
  9. spit it out
  10. spit jack
  11. spit jacks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spit in the ocean (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.

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Cite this entry: “spit in the ocean.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spit_in_the_ocean. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.