How to Use small-time in a Sentence

small-time

adjective

• And yet, parts of the industry still feel small-time.
  — Jacob Feldman, Sportico.com, 26 Feb. 2026
• And too small-time for Carpenter.
  — Lili Anolik, Vanity Fair, 12 Jan. 2026
• Cuban may be worth billions today, but his career started with small-time hustles.
  — Preston Fore, Fortune, 28 Jan. 2026
• From Kennedys and Capote to small-time crooks, this summer isn’t short on characters.
  — Town & Country, 13 June 2023
• Marty, a small-time crook, is facing a second stint in prison and living in his childhood basement.
  — Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times, 1 May 2025
• As a young man, Brun was pulled deep into this scene, becoming a small-time dealer and user.
  — Guthrie Scrimgeour, Rolling Stone, 2 Aug. 2026
• The need among small-time meme coin creators to peacock for attention became even more acute when celebrities piled in.
  — Joel Khalili, WIRED, 12 Sep. 2024
• At 56, White is no longer a small-time boxing coach from South Boston.
  — Jack Crosbie, Rolling Stone, 26 May 2026
• These results seem pretty small-time compared with remotely hacking a car to steer it into a ditch.
  — Neil J. Rubenking, PCMAG, 8 Aug. 2024
• Ana, along with her friends Malú and Martina, are small-time thieves who seduce rich guys, drug them, and steal from them.
  — Anna Marie De La Fuente, Variety, 5 Oct. 2024
• There are dozens, if not hundreds, of similar crews in Atlanta, many with three-letter names, most of them small-time.
  — Charles Bethea, The New Yorker, 28 Aug. 2023
• The victims were members of the Wonderland Gang, a group of small-time drug dealers.
  — Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times, 29 Sep. 2024
• For years, small-time investors could gain the same kind of favorable financing available to buyers who planned to live in their homes.
  — Lew Sichelman, Miami Herald, 24 Sep. 2026
• The small-time thinkers of the faculty won the day, but probably doomed BSC in the process.
  — Joseph Goodman | [e-mail], al, 23 Feb. 2023
• In a key role, Gathegi will play a small-time crook with big time ambitions who is in over his head, according to sources.
  — Borys Kit, HollywoodReporter, 30 Sep. 2026
• This story of a small-time New England criminal takes on the proportions of an epic tragedy.
  — The Week Staff, The Week, 10 Apr. 2023
• Its targets mainly were petty criminals and small-time drug dealers from poor neighborhoods, rights groups say.
  — Aie Balagtas See, New York Times, 5 Apr. 2025
• Hardly anyone wanted to talk about much else — especially not a small-time football team in the second year of its rebirth.
  — Rainer Sabin, Detroit Free Press, 1 May 2023
• But even in a scenario that leaves small-time entrepreneurs in the dust, some advocates argue that medicalization would be a net good.
  — Jane C. Hu, The Atlantic, 8 Apr. 2024
• Bakley was 23 years younger than Blake, a small-time hustler who sold dirty photos of herself to old men and ran a lonely hearts scam.
  — Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2026
• Her husband began to make small-time drug deals, selling homegrown marijuana and poppies, used to make heroin.
  — Brian Murphy, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2023
• O’Neil has felt the stresses of small-time property ownership firsthand.
  — Max Scheinblum, The Denver Post, 27 Feb. 2025
• The succor of small-time hubris is what good bake-offs are about—bakers driven only by that elegant, unimpeachable motive, to be the best.
  — Ruby Tandoh, New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025
• Some are wealthy Russians buying vehicles for themselves, or small-time entrepreneurs looking to resell cars for a quick buck.
  — Jack Ewing, New York Times, 11 May 2023
• Indeed, few modern-day athletes have springboarded their success in a small-time sport more effectively.
  — Zak Keefer, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2026
• So, say some small-time businessmen hire a truck through a dispatcher, the truck drives up to a field, and there, along the perimeter, a forklift crane pulls the pipe up from the sand.
  — Literary Hub, 23 Jan. 2026
• The family's lack of money became one of the biggest factors that drove the brothers to begin their journey as small-time drug dealers.
  — Kayla Grant, People.com, 16 Aug. 2025
• Most American copper thieves, however, are small-time opportunists drawn to a laughably easy score.
  — Vince Beiser, WIRED, 22 Aug. 2024
• Pablo, a small-time dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline share a deep bond over their obsession with the online game Darknoon.
  — Anna Marie De La Fuente, Variety, 23 Sep. 2024
• He was born in Donelson, a Nashville suburb, and spent his youth running afoul of the law, racking up half a dozen arrests for small-time crimes.
  — Sam Kestenbaum, Harper's Magazine, 21 June 2024