petty [LME] This is a phonetic spelling of the pronunciation of French petit ‘small’. The early sense recorded was ‘small in size’. The sense ‘of small importance’ dates from the late 16th century. As well as *petticoat, the word gives us pettifogger [M16th] for an inferior legal practitioner, from petty and obsolete fogger ‘underhand dealer’. This is probably from Fugger, the name of a family of merchants in Augsburg, Bavaria, in the 15th and 16th centuries.