Small potatoes

Persons or things of no account. A phrase apparently invented by David Crockett.

1836.  This is what I call small potatoes and few of a hill.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 25 (Phila.).

1842.  Taking the benefit [of the Bankrupt Act] is a small potato business.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, April 6.

1842.  The Criminal Court is famous for side-bar chit-chat, small-talk, choice epithets from one small potatoe lawyer to another, &c.—Id., May 4.

1842.  The notorious small-potatoe pipe-layer was asked whether he could swear away the character of the young gentleman.—Id., May 26.

1843.  Certain small-potato-patriots publicly on the stump avowed “it was a right smart chance better to have no collidge no how, if all folks hadn’t equal right to larn what they most liked best.”—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ ii. 84.

1846.  An old bachelor, being laughed at by a party of pretty girls, told them that they were small potatoes. “We may be small potatoes,” replied one of the maidens, “but we are sweet ones.”—Oregon Spectator, Feb. 19.

1847.  Are you merely small potato politicians, living upon the ephemeral popular impulses of the moment, and eight dollars a day?—Mr. Wick of Indiana in the House of Repr., Jan. 26: Cong. Globe, p. 263.

a. 1848.  Political foes are such very small potatoes, that they will hardly pay for skinning.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 199.

1852.  It makes me feel so much like digging small potatoes and few in a hill.—Seba Smith (‘Major Downing’), ‘My Thirty Years Out of the Senate,’ p. 394 (1860).

1855.  If there is anything more disgusting than another, it is the effort of small potato politicians, political demagogues, and party pimps, to dub men as “Hon. Mr. So and So.”—Weekly Oregonian, Dec. 22.

1862.  

[1880.  (Mr. Ruskin’s) knowledge of the spirit of the present age turns out to be mighty small pumpkins.—‘Texas Siftings,’ June 23 (Farmer)].