two-bit

Adjective form of two bits.

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

two-bit (not comparable)

1. (US, informal) Costing 25 cents.
2. (US, idiomatic, slang) Insignificant or worthless.

   Forget that two-bit shyster. Get yourself a real lawyer.

   • 1973, Lou Reed (lyrics and music), “Oh, Jim”, in Berlin:

     All your two-bit friends / They're shootin' you up with pills

   • 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 27:

     What Pimp was asking me to do was crazy. Off the fuckin' chain. Insane. He was scheming to stick up T.C. and Miss Lady's pool hall so we could pay off G, but a playa like me was getting ready to go to college and put all that two-bit robbing and stealing shit behind me.

   • 2011, Toby Keith (lyrics and music), “Beers Ago”, in Clancy's Tavern:

     I met a one look girl in a two-bit bar.

   • 2021 February 2, Katharine Murphy, The Guardian‎:

     Serious times demand honesty and self-awareness from people in positions of authority and, at the end of the day, political parties giving succour to fringe views about life-and-death matters is a Faustian pact. This isn’t speculation, or a serve of two-bit punditry to fuel the opinion cycle. This is the lesson of Donald Trump.

• (UK) tuppenny-ha'penny

• two bits