Word.ws English Dictionary

world's smallest violin

world's smallest violin noun: a notional violin that plays tragic music for the afflicted; used in dismissive responses to complaints of woe.

Noun

world's smallest violin

  1. (humorous) A notional violin that plays tragic music for the afflicted; used in dismissive responses to complaints of woe.
    • Ohh, boo-hoo! Let me play a sad song for you on the world's smallest violin.2002, “Squilliam Returns”, in SpongeBob SquarePants, season 3, episode 48b, spoken by Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown)
    • The world's smallest violin playing hearts and flowers for every sweetheart of the Midwest who didn't make it in Hollywood.2007, Joseph P. Natoli, This is a picture and not the world: movies and a post-9/11 America, page 109

Examples of world's smallest violin in a sentence

  • He stretches out his arm and then rubs his thumb and forefinger together as if he is playing the world's smallest violin for the world's largest whiner.2008, Patsy Clairmont, I Second That Emotion: Untangling Our Zany Feelings:
  • Even someone upset about something as serious and awful as cancer wasn't safe from my world's smallest violin.2010, Geo Gosling, TBI Purgatory: Comes After Being in TBI Hell, page 102:
  • The world's smallest violin / Really needs an audience / So if I do not find somebody soon (That's right, that's right) / I'll blow up into smithereens2021 March 26, AJR, “World's Smallest Violin”, in OK Orchestra, US: AJR Productions, BMG Rights Management, →OCLC:

Origin of world's smallest violin

A version of Hearts and Flowers on violin was used in many melodramatic films in the early 1900s. From this and the use of other violin pieces in melodramatic films derive the term hearts and flowers (“extremely sentimental and sweet”), the phrase break out the violins (in a dismissive/sarcastic show of sympathy), and the image of a violin (small, to reflect that the woe complained of is perceived to be small) playing Hearts and Flowers or "the world's saddest song" in response to complaints of woe.

Questions about world's smallest violin

What does world's smallest violin mean?
World's smallest violin means a notional violin that plays tragic music for the afflicted; used in dismissive responses to complaints of woe.
How do you use world's smallest violin in a sentence?
He stretches out his arm and then rubs his thumb and forefinger together as if he is playing the world's smallest violin for the world's largest whiner.
What part of speech is world's smallest violin?
World's smallest violin is a noun.

Words near world's smallest violin in the dictionary

  1. world's fastest woman
  2. world's greatest athlete
  3. world's oldest profession
  4. world's record
  5. world's records
  6. world's smallest violin
  7. world's soul
  8. world's tiniest violin
  9. world-ash
  10. world-beater
  11. world-beaters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: world's smallest violin (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-world's smallest violin.wav.

Cite this entry: “world's smallest violin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/world%27s_smallest_violin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.