pipsqueak
/ˈpɪpskwiːk
/noun informal
A person considered to be insignificant, especially because they are small or young: I was damned if a nineteen-year-old pipsqueak with spots was going to make me feel loathsome...
- I'm about average height now, I like to think, but I was a pipsqueak as a kid.
- Think of America not as the playground bully but as the well-muscled mild-mannered good kid who finally hauls off and whacks the loudmouth pipsqueak who won't stop bugging him.
- Least understandable, though, is the Mercury music prize, with its piffling purse and its pompous panel of five pipsqueaks.
Synonyms
insignificant person, nobody, nonentity, non-person, gnat, insect, cipher, pygmy;
upstart
informal squirt, stripling
British informal nerk, johnny, squit, whippersnapper
Scottish informal nyaff
North American informal bozo, picayune, pisher, snip
dated puppy, pup
archaic, informal dandiprat
Origin
Early 20th century: symbolic and imitative.