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Niggling   Listen
Niggling

adjective
1.
(informal) small and of little importance.  Synonyms: fiddling, footling, lilliputian, little, petty, picayune, piddling, piffling, trivial.  "A footling gesture" , "Our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war" , "A little (or small) matter" , "A dispute over niggling details" , "Limited to petty enterprises" , "Piffling efforts" , "Giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction"



Niggle

verb
(past & past part. niggled; pres. part. niggling)
1.
Worry unnecessarily or excessively.  Synonyms: fret, fuss.
2.
Argue over petty things.  Synonyms: bicker, brabble, pettifog, quibble, squabble.



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WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Niggling" Quotes from Famous Books



... at this new Moran in no little amazement. Where was the reckless, untamed girl of the previous night, who had sworn at him and denounced his niggling misgivings as ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... test of a critic's quality. No task can well be harder than to take a poem, a stanza, or a line, to decide "Just here lies the strength, the charm; or just here the looseness, the defect." In any but the strongest hands these methods ensure mere niggling ingenuity, in which all appreciation of the broader purposes of the author—of Aristotle's 'universal'—disappears, while the critic reveals himself as an industrious pick-thank person concerned with matters of slight and secondary importance. But ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch



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