Definitions

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  • noun Plural form of caviler.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Which quickly puts paid to the nitpickers and cavilers who threaten to ruin a dinner party, by swearing up and down they were eyewitnesses to the murder of the Indian political and spiritual leader in 1946.

    Schmidt's Google To Be Embedded On Motorola Phones 2006

  • Which quickly puts paid to the nitpickers and cavilers who threaten to ruin a dinner party, by swearing up and down they were eyewitnesses to the murder of the Indian political and spiritual leader in 1946.

    Forbes Faces Of The Week, Jan. 2-6 Faces Of The Week, Jan. 2-6 Forbes.com staff 2006

  • And hence certain perverse cavilers take occasion to object,

    Commentary on Genesis - Volume 1 1509-1564 1996

  • “I have no fears of those who honestly believe the bridge to be injurious to the navigation,” John Roebling had said, “the opposition of cavilers I most dread.”

    The Great Bridge David McCullough 1972

  • The housekeeper was now able to silence all cavilers by producing the book itself.

    Recollections of the late William Beckford of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath Henry Venn Lansdown

  • He had done well, and she was eminently the right kind of wife for him, let conventional cavilers say what they would.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876 Various

  • At last one, a little wiser than the rest, explained the difference between art and artifice; asked the cavilers if they had never heard of the art of writing, or the art of thinking? and said he presumed the art of conversing was of the same nature.

    The Ladies' Vase Polite Manual for Young Ladies An American Lady

  • When the weekly sermon was the universal topic of conversation, the refinements of belief were more discussed than essentials; often discussed, they were often questioned -- by strict Separatists like Roger Williams; by cavilers at infant baptism like that "anciently religious woman," the Lady Deborah

    Beginnings of the American People Carl Lotus Becker 1909

  • Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital issue -- the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against

    Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Marie Conway Oemler 1905

  • Cross-examined by cavilers, infidels, atheist, they still stand there unscathed and unharmed, its the Jewish youths, who in Babylon's furnace walked, because with them stood one like unto the Son of God.

    The Bible or Atheism 1897

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