hair-splitting
hair-splitting noun: the act of considering or arguing about exceedingly small differences, fine details, and/or edge cases of no seeming importance, worrying about minutiae.
Noun
hair-splitting (countable and uncountable, plural hair-splittings)
- The act of considering or arguing about exceedingly small differences, fine details, and/or edge cases of no seeming importance, worrying about minutiae.
- 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.2014, Richard H. Immerman, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA
- Synonyms:
- hair-splittery, pedantry, pilpul, casuistry, casuistics, Jesuitism, Jesuitry
Adjective
hair-splitting (comparative more hair-splitting, superlative most hair-splitting)
- 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.
- 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.2006, Ian Aitken, in The Guardian, Richard Clements Obituary
- Synonyms:
- pedantic, casuistic, casuistical, jesuitic, jesuitical, Talmudic, pilpulic, pilpulistic
hair-splitting meaning in Tamil and Malayalam
hair-splitting in Tamil
- நுண்கூர் வேறுபாட்டு அமைப்பு
hair-splitting in Malayalam
- quibbling, pedantic, pettifogging
- സൂക്ഷ്മവും കൗശലപൂർണ്ണവുമായി വാദിക്കുന്ന, കടുകീറി കണക്കു പറയുന്ന, കുയുക്തിയോടെ വാദിക്കുന്ന, വള്ളിപുള്ളി വിടാത്ത, ദുർവിദഗ്ദ്ധനായ, പണ്ഡിതമ്മന്യ
Synonyms of hair-splitting
- hair-splittery
- pedantry
- pilpul
- casuistry
- casuistics
- Jesuitism
- pedantic
- casuistic
- casuistical
- jesuitic
6 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of hair-splitting
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | hair-splittings |
| alternative form | hair splitting |
| alternative form | hairsplitting |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more hair-splitting |
| superlative | most hair-splitting |
Origin of hair-splitting
From splitting hairs, q.v.
Words formed from hair-splitting
Questions about hair-splitting
- What does hair-splitting mean?
- Hair-splitting means the act of considering or arguing about exceedingly small differences, fine details, and/or edge cases of no seeming importance, worrying about minutiae.
- What is hair-splitting in Tamil?
- Hair-splitting in Tamil is நுண்கூர் வேறுபாட்டு அமைப்பு. See Hair-splitting meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is hair-splitting?
- Hair-splitting can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of hair-splitting?
- The plural of hair-splitting is hair-splittings.
Words near hair-splitting in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hair-splitting (page history and authors); hair-splitting (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hair-splitting (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-hair-splitting.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hair-splitting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hair-splitting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.