Puny means small and weak. A puny effort, puny arms, look puny.
It is dismissive in every use: a puny amount is insultingly small, and a puny person is weak rather than merely slight. It works well for comparisons — puny beside the mountain. The word is a respelling of puisne, an Anglo-Norman word meaning born later and so junior, which survives in English law as puisne judge, pronounced exactly like puny and meaning junior rather than feeble.
1adjectivepunySmall and weak.
“He felt puny standing next to the huge rugby players.”
puny is a quality of weakness.
Anglo-Norman puisné meant born afterwards — puis né — and so younger and weaker. English kept the legal spelling puisne for junior judges and respelt the everyday word as puny.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵenh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*pós — afterwards
Latin
posteā — afterwards; hereafter; thereafter; next, then
Vulgar Latin
*postius — afterward
Old French
pois — after; since
Middle French
puisné — born after (a specified person); younger, youngest; one who is born after (a specified person)
Anglo-Norman
puisné — later, more recent; junior; weakly
English, today
puny
Built from
A respelling of puisne, from Anglo-Norman puisné (“later, more recent; junior; weakly”)puné, puiné, punie, pusné and Middle French puisné (“born after (a specified person); younger, youngest; one who is born after (a specified person)”) (modern French puîné (“cadet (born after a sibling); a cadet (someone born after a sibling)”)), from puis (“after; since”) + né (“born”). Puis is derived from Old French pois (“after; since”), from Vulgar Latin postius (“afterward”), from Latin posteā (“afterwards; hereafter; thereafter; next, then”), from post (“after; since”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European pós (“afterwards”)) + ea (“these (things)”); and né from Latin nātus (“born”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ǵenh₁- (“to beget; to give birth; to produce”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA