Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Insignificant or unimportant; minor.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In the manufacture of tinplate as at present carried on in England, the pot, filled with molten tin, in which the sheet of iron receives its first coating of tin, immediately after being taken out of the palm-oil bath.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective informal
Inferior ;shoddy . - adjective informal Of a country, regime etc.,
autocratic , especiallyamusingly so.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Why must the media hang on every word this dimwitted tin-pot wannabee has to say?
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The reason Nancy Pelosi wants to use this unsavory subterfuge of a tin-pot Machiavelli is because she cannot find a majority of votes for the Senate bill.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Is the Slaughter Solution constitutional? 2010
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He described them as filled with, third-world variety Runyonesque people, tin-pot dictators.
Far-Flung Observations Ralph Gardner Jr. 2011
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Lately, our hired hand, Cameron, strikes me as looking very tin-pot and a bit Iago too.
Cairo protests:The west has a duty to nurture democracy | Observer editorial 2011
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We have a president who fears to stand up to tin-pot tyrannts.
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The problem with HAs (as well as Condo Associations) and so forth is that they seem to attract the worst sort of tin-pot petty tyrants onto them, even worse than those who manage to get themselves onto zoning boards.
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The region's history has been so fraught and often incomprehensibly savage that simply reporting the plain facts—the slave trade and sugar plantations, the depredations of tin-pot dictators, the numerous noxious creatures—requires considerable dialing back simply to make it believable.
From Guyana to Guiana Wayne Curtis 2011
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The GOP can then share responsibility with Mr. Obama for losing in Libya and emboldening a tin-pot dictator.
The GOP's War Powers Opportunism Kimberley A. Strassel 2011
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Having the BEST, STRONGEST military prevents future wars from the tin-pot dictators Obama bows down to or goes out of his way to praise.
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By contrast, today's large corporations are run like banana republics by tin-pot dictators.
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