negligibleadj.
/ˈnɛɡlᵻdʒᵻbl/, U.S. /ˈnɛɡlədʒəb(ə)l/ 1. Of a thing, quantity, etc.: able to be neglected or disregarded; unworthy of notice or regard; spec. so small or insignificant as not to be worth considering.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > importance > unimportance > [adjective] > capable of being neglected or disregarded
disregardable1661
skippable1820
negligible1841
eliminable1857
negligeable1876
neglectable1878
1841 J. F. W. Herschel Address 12 Feb. in Mem. Royal Astron. Soc. 12 448 The points of intersection with the axis ought to occur at dates in like manner calculated à priori; and so they do within very negligible limits of error.
1879 W. Thomson & P. G. Tait Treat. Nat. Philos. (new ed.) I: Pt. i. §431 When their difference is too large to be negligible.
1895 Nation (N.Y.) 22 Aug. 137/3 Admitting such a thing as negligible quantities in a work of art.
1911 G. B. Shaw Getting Married Pref. in Doctor's Dilemma 170 In the State of Washington,..divorce can be had for the asking at a negligible cost.
1944 E. Waugh Let. 17 Aug. (1980) 186 I was burned in several places, on both hands, legs and heads, but as I was anaesthetized by shock my sufferings were negligible.
1984 A. Thwaite Edmund Gosse x. 281 Many of the errors were of negligible importance.
2001 Nature 11 Jan. 160/1 The cloud is sufficiently nearby that foreground star contamination is negligible.
2. Of a person and (occasionally) of a place: of little worth, substance, or significance; of no account, unimportant; that can be disregarded or passed over.
ΚΠ
1895 G. Saintsbury in Fortnightly Rev. Feb. 195 Not that he is by any means a negligible person.
1903 G. B. Shaw Man & Superman i. 16 One of those women who are conscious of being treated as silly and negligible.
1920 T. S. Eliot Sacred Wood 54 The reasons..are..second, that a not negligible public appears to want verse plays.
c1925 D. H. Lawrence Virgin & Gipsy (1930) i. 7 Wounded, they decided that it was because their mother found them negligible.
1962 L. Woolf Let. 5 July (1990) 448 The sneering and sniping leave the uninformed reader with the impression that they were merely silly or negligible.
1988 Harrowsmith Jan. 43/2 You can see Henry County either as a rather negligible kind of backwater, a boondock that nobody would care much about, or..a country capable of diverse uses and pleasures.
Derivatives
ˈnegligibleness n. negligibility.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > importance > unimportance > [noun]
smallness1541
nothingness1646
nonentity1654
insignificancy1661
non-significancy1670
insignificance1714
unimportance1751
inconsequence1759
non-entityism1846
negligibility1896
negligibleness1906
1906 N.E.D. at Negligible Also, in recent use, negligibleness and negligibility.
1946 Econ. Jrnl. 56 428 This infancy and negligibleness are made more striking by comparing China's factory production with that of the other three countries.
1989 Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 83 218/2 We must accept the negligibleness of instrumental motivations in mass elections.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.1841