nit-picking
Britishnoun
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012adjective
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Other Word Forms
- nit-picker noun
Etymology
Origin of nit-picking
C20: from nit 1 + pick 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Some may see such criticisms of “The Holdovers” as nit-picking, or an attempt to rain on Randolph’s parade.
From Los Angeles Times
There is plenty of the sort of officious nit-picking beloved of sports authorities.
From New York Times
Gaining any new clarity about surging reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, will take time, better data gathering and diagnostic tools and, perhaps most importantly, a hale and hearty dose of nit-picking scientific scrutiny.
From Scientific American
I’m on the Kael side of this divide, and this repurposing, linking Kael with a hack biographer, rubbed me the wrong way, but that’s life, and it’s nit-picking, and it’s a whole other freeway.
From New York Times
In a Wednesday tweet, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Los Angeles Times writer seemed to address nit-picking criticisms of the book with a quote by “The Liars’ Club” author Mary Karr, who wrote 2015’s “The Art of Memoir.”
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
