- 1
A pittance is a very small amount of money, especially pay for work, that is less than someone needs or deserves. “They paid him a pittance” is a complaint: the wage feels almost small. People sometimes stretch it to other things — a pittance of food, a pittance of time — meaning a tiny amount, but money and are the home of the word. It sounds a little old and . In casual talk, someone might say they were paid peanuts, or almost nothing. Long ago it was a small gift given out of piety, often food; the “tiny amount” feeling stayed, and the money meaning grew.
微薄的薪水；少得可憐的一點錢
組成From Middle English pitaunce, from Old French pitance, from Medieval Latin pietantia, from Latin pietas (“piety”). A pittance was once a small pious gift; later it came to mean a tiny amount of money.
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
pittancenoun/ˈpɪtəns/
- 1
A small allowance of food and drink; a scanty meal.
- 2
A meagre allowance of money or wages.
- In the very prime of life, Mr. Glentworth found every prospect gone; he had only a meagre pittance, compared to his former expenditure; but he had neither the habits nor the opportunity of increasing it.
- So I went to keep house with him at the Why Not? and my aunt sent down my bag of clothes, and would have made over to Elzevir the pittance that my father left for my keep, but he said it was not needful, and he would have none of it.
- 3
A small amount.
- The former residents of Fraguas, who sold up for a pittance, have swung behind the resettlement, happy to see life return to the narrow lanes where they grew up.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。