small fry
noun phrase

- people or things that are not considered to be important

(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

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The noun fry refers to "young fish" and goes back to the late 13th century. It may stem from the Anglo-French "frei" and Old French "frai" meaning to lay eggs or spawn. Frai further derives from "froier," to rub (such as rubbing the abdomen on sand).

The Oxford Dictionary and other sources trace this usage to the Old Norse "frjo and fræ" meaning seed or offspring. Apart from describing young fish, fry can also refer to individuals, especially young or insignificant ones.

With that in mind, the expression "small fry" is a typical example of a redundant term or phrase, of which there are numerous ones in English. Linguists call them pleonasms (from the Greek "pleon" meaning more or too much) By definition, fry means small. Thus adding small is in theory superfluous. We nevertheless tend to create lots of redundant phrases perhaps for the purposes of emphasising something. Here are several other examples of how redundantly we speak sometimes:

- advance warning / advance planning

- anonymous stranger

- brief summary

- cooperate together / mutual cooperation

- final conclusion

- fly through the air

- knowledgeable expert

- new innovation

- past experience

- tuna fish

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SYNONYMS

insignificant, minor, irrelevant, small-time, secondary, trivial, petty, minuscule, small potatoes

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Practice OWAD in a conversation today, say something like:

"Our problems are SMALL FRY compared to those of people in many other countries."