hair-splitting
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.76 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The act of considering or arguing about exceedingly small differences, fine details, and/or edge cases of no seeming importance, worrying about minutiae.
Countable; Derogatory; Uncountable
adj
Of or characterized by hair-splitting, seeking or having exceedingly small differences, fine details, and/or edge cases of no seeming importance, concerning or concerned with minutiae.
Derogatory
Example Sentences
- "Regardless of the ultimate judgment and any hair splitting, the CIA seemed to many Americans to have regressed to and even surpassed its criminal-like behavior during the pre-Church Committee hearings era."
- "2006, Ian Aitken, in The Guardian, Richard Clements Obituary Dick's Tribune poked endless fun at the hair-splitting sectarianism of the various Trotskyist groups jostling on the fringes of the Labour party at that time."
Etymology
From splitting hairs, q.v.
Usage
Inflected Forms
hair-splittings (plural)
hair splitting (alternative)
hairsplitting (alternative)
more hair-splitting (comparative)
most hair-splitting (superlative)