small fry

From small +‎ fry, first use appears c. 1577, in the publications of John Dee.

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small fry (plural small fry or small fries)

1. One or more small or immature fish.
2. (informal) One or more children.
   • 1952 August, Austin Edwards, “The Cranberry and Small Fry Line”, in Railway Magazine, page 556:

     After his death in 1950, his widow and a board of trustees who were left with responsibility of running the cranberry plant decided to continue the miniature railway's services to the "small fry", and it opened as usual on December 6, 1951.

3. (idiomatic) One or more relatively small and insignificant individuals or things of relatively little consequence, importance, or value.

   Synonyms: small potatoes, minnow, nobody, no one

   Antonym: big fish

   The police did not arrest the drug dealer since he was small fry compared to his boss.

   These slot machines are just the small fry. The big games are in the back room.

• “small fry”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “small fry”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “small fry” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
• “small fry”, in Collins English Dictionary.