Piddling means very small and not important — so small you almost laugh at it. A piddling amount of money is almost nothing; a piddling problem is not worth a long fight. It is everyday talk with a snap of irritation: you use it when you want to say “this is tiny; why are we treating it as big?” It is for sums, rules, fees, and little differences, not a kind word for a child’s work (that would hurt). It grew from piddle in the “waste time on little jobs” sense, not from the toilet sense, though those two feelings sat close for a long time: little jobs, little amounts. You will hear it more from older speakers and in writing that wants to sound fed up. As a verb form, the puppy is piddling can also just mean the puppy is weeing — that is a different use of the same spelling.

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