Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To be concerned with or find fault with insignificant details. See Synonyms at quibble.
Wiktionary
- v. To correct minutiae or find fault in unimportant details; to kvetch.
- v. archaic To pick nits - lice eggs - from someone’s hair.
WordNet 3.0
- v. be overly critical; criticize minor details
Etymologies
- From nit + pick, originally referring to literally removing invisibly-tiny louse eggs by hand. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Obviously it wasn't my intent to write an encyclopedia entry on the topic, and your nitpick is an attempt to divert things off-topic.”
“And as long as we are in nitpick mode, electricity is hardly sold in a classic competitive market.”
Economics for Environmentalists, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“That nitpick is the extent of your substantive rebuttal?”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Merrick Garland is no friend of the rights of gun owners
“And my desire to nitpick is practically non-existent, so there's that as well.”
“The only small nitpick is that there wasn't more closure to the Ryan/Taylor relationship.”
“The problem with this particular attempt to nitpick, is that YECs/Morris reject mountians of scientific evidence for their dogma.”
“The REAL nitpick is that since there is no Congressionally declared war, we aren’t at war now.”
“That is not to nitpick, that is to say he obviously did so intentionally.”
“My only "nitpick" is that the Batman figure not included with the Batmobile from this line has to almost lay completely horizontal to fit inside the cockpit.”
“If watching Hillary Clinton's campaign has taught me anything, it is that they have graciously mastered the art of the "nitpick".”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nitpick’.
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WF - list of EN back-formations
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations
aborigine, accrete, acculturate, admix, admixture, adolesce, adsorb, adulate, advect, aesthete, air-condition, anticline and 212 more...
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EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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cutting words
sarcasm, sarx, sarcoptic, syssarcosis, shrew, shrewd, screed, scred, shroud, scroll, scrod, scrutiny and 326 more...
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MsHalston's Words
theoretically, insufferable, apolitico, milquetoast, egregious, aplomb, elan, fraught, flummox, befrocked, moll, molten and 605 more...
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beastly verbs
someone must already have this list?
squirrel away, worm it out of so..., pony up, fish for compliments, weasel out, badger, outfox, horse around, hound, cow, chicken out, goose and 99 more...
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N
Tweets
Looking for tweets for nitpick.
johnmperry to look for nits Jun 20, 2008