peanut, noun. Seed
used as food and yielding oil.
In a sentence: “We ate pretzel sticks,
potato chips and peanuts.”
I don’t
necessarily want to talk about the seed, you probably know that word. And no, I
also don’t want to talk about the comic strip Peanuts.
I am talking about
the following meaning: A very small or insufficient amount, as in: “That’s
peanuts!”
I once used it in
the US, but people didn’t know what it meant. Maybe it’s only a British
meaning, but I couldn’t verify that. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy uses
the word, when talking about things in contrast to space:
"Space […] is
big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you
may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just
peanuts to space, listen..." And so on.
To boggle, by the
way, means to confuse or mystify; overwhelm. So mindbogglingly means in a
mindboggling manner; in such a way as to boggle the mind; so as to be beyond
comprehension or understanding.
Wow, that was
deep. As is space.
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