Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To be concerned with or find fault with insignificant details. synonym: quibble.
- intransitive verb To criticize or find fault with (someone or something) in a petty way.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
correct minutiae or findfault in unimportantdetails ; tokvetch . - verb archaic To pick
nits -lice eggs - from someone’shair .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb be overly critical; criticize minor details
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word nitpick.
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 2009
-
And my desire to nitpick is practically non-existent, so there's that as well.
skittledog: [Auto-Response] skittledog 2009
-
That nitpick is the extent of your substantive rebuttal?
The Volokh Conspiracy » Merrick Garland is no friend of the rights of gun owners 2010
-
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 problem with this particular attempt to nitpick, is that YECs/Morris reject mountians of scientific evidence for their dogma.
-
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.
Baseball Analysts 2009
johnmperry commented on the word nitpick
to look for nits
June 20, 2008