How to Use small beer in a Sentence

small beer

noun
Definition of small beernext
Synonyms for small beernext
  • At a cost of just over $2 billion, that measure is small beer.
    — Geoffrey Smith, Fortune, 23 Mar. 2020
  • But small beer compared to, say, death by a slippery virus.
    — Scott Burns, Dallas News, 4 Dec. 2020
  • But that's just small beer compared with the riches on offer for the winner at stud.
    — Rob Hodgetts, CNN, 31 May 2018
  • That may be small beer for now, but Wetherspoon, at least, expects hoppy times ahead.
    — The Economist, 12 Dec. 2019
  • But compared to the world-eating ambition of Amazon or Uber, this is small beer.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 12 Mar. 2018
  • One of the village’s longest streets, School Street, winding past homes and a small beer and kvass stand, was cratered from bombs and littered with shrapnel.
    — Fredrick Kunkle, Washington Post, 30 May 2022
  • Three years later, Louis Zistel opened a small beer garden, bathhouse and dance floor.
    — Frank Witsil, Detroit Free Press, 11 Dec. 2019
  • That is small beer compared with the advantages enjoyed by the children of the educated and wealthy.
    — The Economist, 26 Mar. 2018
  • That makes the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 look like small beer.
    — Mickey D. Levy and Michael D. Bordo, WSJ, 26 Apr. 2021
  • For Henry Holt and its parent company Macmillan, these screw-ups are small beer.
    — Alex Shephard, New Republic, 9 Jan. 2018
  • The system is meant to make sure that big beer manufacturers can’t use their muscle with retailers to push out smaller beer brands.
    — Kyle Arnold, OrlandoSentinel.com, 26 June 2018
  • Anchor introduced just one new beer in the ’80s (summer wheat); one in the ’90s (a low-alcohol English style dubbed small beer); and two in the decade preceding Maytag’s sale of the brewery (bock and humming ale).
    — San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Jan. 2015
  • Converted into a bar for the small beer garden beside the building, an Airstream trailer is being painted by local artist UNO.
    — Jeremy Hallock, Dallas News, 15 Dec. 2020
  • Concerns about prices of pork, soybeans and solar panels are small beer in light of this scourge, which is now responsible for the annual deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
    — WSJ, 12 July 2022
  • One employee monitored the small beer and wine section to manually check IDs.
    — Bloomberg News, NOLA.com, 22 Jan. 2018
  • To be sure — three of my favorite weasel words — these large home value increases are relatively small beer compared with the far bigger increase in the value of U.S. stocks over the same period.
    — Washington Post, 16 June 2021
  • Count us skeptical that Democrats will back any substantive reforms that could ease fossil-fuel development, but even those on the table seem to be small beer.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 2 Aug. 2022
  • In November, Baerlic converted its adjacent taproom to a small beer and wine shop, closing down most on-site seating.
    — Michael Russell, oregonlive, 11 Feb. 2021
  • That's a big problem for small beer breweries, says Isamu Yoneda, head distiller at artisanal drinks maker Kiuchi Brewery.
    — Rebecca Cairns, CNN, 22 Oct. 2020
  • Some of this may sound like small beer, but the history of information technology shows that small tweaks have often been effective in bringing down the giants.
    — The Economist, 28 June 2018
  • There's nothing surreal, though, about the brewpub, a friendly, homey spot with a small beer garden and an extensive menu of sandwiches, burgers, flatbreads, and entrees like fish-and-chips.
    — Julia Thiel, Chicago Reader, 22 June 2018
  • The fruit that apes were eating was probably 1 to 4 percent alcohol, somewhere between small beer and Michelob Ultra.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 5 Dec. 2019
  • But Germany’s government keeps bickering about small beer.
    — Washington Post, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Other online shopping sites, including JD.com and Pinduoduo, were also offering deals, but were small beer compared to Taobao.
    — Washington Post, 11 Nov. 2019
  • Hard liquor had replaced small beer and other much milder drinks during early American history, and especially after the Civil War, women said liquor was causing drastic increases in domestic violence.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 17 Jan. 2020
  • In terms of commercial magnitude, six months of retaliatory tariffs are small beer compared with 30 years of currency manipulation, forced technological appropriation, and copyright and patent theft.
    — Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 27 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'small beer.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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