Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Minute, trivial, unnecessary, and unjustified criticism or faultfinding.
Wiktionary
- n. The painstaking process of removing nits (lice eggs) from someone's hair.
- n. figuratively, by extension A process of finding or pointing out tiny details or errors, particularly if the pointed-out details seem insignificant or irrelevant to all but the finder.
Etymologies
- nit + picking (Wiktionary)
Examples
“I can't remember how old I was when I figured out that the term nitpicking must have come from picking lice nits.”
“And that little bit of nitpicking is really annoying me.”
“Whenever I hear someone say they hate Shyamalan's movies, I get really bizarre responses that usually end up in nitpicking, not really any reason to genuinely hate something.”
What Happened To The Great M. Night Shyamalan? « FirstShowing.net
“If nitpicking is the best Republicans have, they are in for a very crushing defeat this fall.”
“#36 My nitpicking is form a filmmaker's perspective.”
All of The Dark Knight's Broken Records - Box Office Dominance! « FirstShowing.net
“` ` This year it's been a little more difficult in nitpicking little things, and I think sometimes we get guys hesitating.”
“I know the the fanatic fan nitpicking is annoying, but this is just a matter of internal movie logic.”
“Bush, the leader of the United States of America, looks like an idiot on TV (once again) and you call it nitpicking?”
“That level of nitpicking is clearly ludicrous, since English grammar is not, despite what the teachers might tell you, an exact science.”
“But when I contemplate this letter, and confer with my "legal adviser" certain things about it deserve some right good "nitpicking" - and the legal charade it attempts to present as "gospel" and "edict" should be exposed, word after bloody word, thought after sickening thought.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nitpicking’.
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wordniking
We all know what the difference between word and wording is. What is the difference between wordnik and wordniking?
nickpicking, nitpicking, passing phrasing, phrase phase, brief verbiage, metaphrase, across acrostic, anaphora, mutatis mutandis, in enclitic, fuss of rebus, anastrophe and 14 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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5-1
Hecko, words! Thanks for staying with me. :-)
avenue, viscous, zeroth, usher, scarcely, viability, snout, sole, purify, riotous, menace, moist and 364 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for nitpicking.
bilby Yeah, like lowland gorillas. Aug 23, 2011
GHibbs My adjectival use: 'They are such a nitpicking group!' Aug 23, 2011