These words refer to anything that has little bearing on a given question or that is slight in quantity or importance. Marginal and peripheral both point to a small degree of value, usefulness or importance: a marginal increase in pay. Of the two, only marginal can suggest something that an opposing force has almost but not quite cancelled out: a marginal profit once costs had been accounted for; marginal culture traits left by an incomplete assimilation into the cultural majority. Peripheral is more restricted to something that may be important in itself but is not relevant to a given situation: the Maori tribal wars being of peripheral concern to that period of New Zealand history. Both of these words can, of course, indicate something that is distant from a centre or lies at the edge of some entity: a book filled with marginal notations; peripheral vision.

Negligible adds to the general possibilities of the previous pair a particular implication of a slight amount, something so small that it can be safely ignored: arguing that only a negligible rise in atmospheric radioactivity resulted from the test; a negligible variation that could not affect the outcome of the experiment. Piddling is a much more informal substitute for negligible , concentrating more exclusively on amount or value, particularly monetary: a piddling allowance. But it can also refer more vaguely as invective to weak arguments or to anything thought to be insignificant: a piddling explanation; a piddling second lieutenant.

Both inconsequential and minor concentrate mainly on a lack of importance. Inconsequential , like negligible , can indicate a lack of relevance: an inconsequential objection to our plan. But it can function explicitly as indicating a lack of power or social status: an inconsequential person. Minor may function similarly to other words here, but unlike them it can point to something of considerably greater importance, though such a thing would still remain clearly subsidiary, secondary or subordinate to a main point or concern: any combination of minor failings that could yet add up to disaster; separating those important Elizabethan poets, major and minor , from those of marginal or negligible interest, while ignoring completely those who have proved to be totally inconsequential .

All the preceding words emphasize a relative slightness of quantity or importance. Nugatory is the one word here that emphatically stresses an absolute and unqualified lack, in this case of worth or meaning: avantgarde experiments with language that were nugatory both in sense and influence.