Definition
Minor, lesser, or of smaller degree — used in law to distinguish a less serious category of an offense, proceeding, or institution from its more serious counterpart. "Petty" functions primarily as a modifier rather than a standalone term, appearing in compounds such as petty jury, petty larceny, and petty treason. In each context, the word signals that the thing described occupies the lower tier of a two-tier classification.
The most consequential modern legal use is in petty offense, a category of criminal violation sufficiently minor that the accused has no constitutional right to a jury trial. The threshold is defined by potential punishment: under federal constitutional doctrine, offenses carrying a maximum sentence of six months or less are generally classified as petty offenses.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Having little or no importance; marked by small-mindedness, selfishness, or spite over trivial matters; inclined to cause frustration out of pettiness over minor grievances.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Little; trifling; inconsiderable; also inferior or subordinate, as in a petty fault or a petty prince.
The common meaning of petty has drifted toward a distinctly behavioral or moral judgment — implying pettiness of character, spite, or small-mindedness — that has no place in legal usage. In law, petty describes a formal classification based on objective criteria (typically the severity of punishment or value of property at issue), not a moral assessment of the parties involved. A researcher encountering "petty" in a legal source should read it as a technical tier designation, not a qualitative judgment.
Common Confusion
Petty and petit are the same word in functional legal usage, the former being the anglicized form of the French. Both appear interchangeably in historical sources, which creates inconsistency when searching older materials. Black's (2nd Ed.) treats petty as the English form of petit and redirects the reader accordingly. A corpus search that looks only for one spelling will miss instances of the other. Additionally, "petty offense" should not be confused with "misdemeanor" — while there is overlap, petty offense is a constitutional category defined by sentencing exposure, whereas misdemeanor is a statutory classification that varies by jurisdiction. In some jurisdictions, misdemeanors can carry penalties that would remove them from the constitutional petty offense category.
Why It Matters in Research
Spelling variation is the primary research trap. Legal sources before the twentieth century use petit and petty interchangeably, with no consistent rule governing which form appears in a given text. Burrill notes the words are used "indiscriminately." Any corpus search for compounds — petit jury / petty jury, petit larceny / petty larceny — must account for both spellings to avoid gaps.
The constitutional significance of petty offense has grown considerably since the founding era and is largely invisible in the historical dictionaries. The historical sources treat petty as a descriptive modifier; the modern constitutional doctrine built around the petty/serious offense distinction (governing Sixth Amendment jury trial rights) is a twentieth-century development not reflected in Black's 2nd Ed. or Burrill. Researchers working on jury trial rights or criminal procedure should treat the historical dictionary entries as incomplete on this point and consult modern doctrinal sources directly.
For petty larceny specifically, the dollar thresholds that define it have shifted dramatically across jurisdictions and time periods. An amount that constituted grand larceny in one era or jurisdiction may fall well within the petty larceny range in another. Historical sources reflecting fixed thresholds are time- and place-specific; never assume the boundary stated in one source travels across jurisdictions or centuries.
Petty treason — the killing of a master by a servant, a husband by a wife, or a prelate by a subordinate — appears in historical sources as a distinct offense from high treason, carrying its own penalties. This category was abolished in England in 1828 and has no modern counterpart. Researchers encountering the term in historical materials should not map it onto contemporary treason doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three shelf sources are in substantial agreement: petty means small, minor, or inferior, and is the anglicized form of petit. Burrill's framing — "framed from the Fr. petit, and sometimes used indiscriminately with it" — is the most explicit about the spelling interchangeability, which has direct research implications. Anderson's redirects entirely to the PETIT entry, suggesting the two were treated as functionally identical in that dictionary's organizational scheme. Black's 2nd Ed. adds that petty sometimes appears instead of petit in specific compounds, then similarly redirects.
None of the historical dictionaries addresses the constitutional dimension of petty offense, nor do they engage with the jury trial right threshold. This is an expected gap given their vintage, but it means researchers relying solely on these sources will have an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of how the term functions in modern criminal procedure.
Jurisdictional Note
The definition of petty larceny — and the dollar value separating it from grand larceny — varies significantly by jurisdiction and has changed over time within individual jurisdictions. The constitutional line between petty and serious offenses for jury trial purposes is a federal constitutional floor; states may extend jury trial rights further than the federal minimum but not below it.