Word.ws English Dictionary

hair-splittingly

hair-splittingly adverb: in a hair-splitting way, characterized by exceedingly small differences, fine details, or edge cases of no seeming importance.

Adverb

hair-splittingly (comparative more hair-splittingly, superlative most hair-splittingly)

  1. (idiomatic) In a hair-splitting way, characterized by exceedingly small differences, fine details, or edge cases of no seeming importance.
    • Nobody expected the vote to be so hair-splittingly close.

Forms of hair-splittingly

comparativemore hair-splittingly
superlativemost hair-splittingly
alternative formhairsplittingly

Origin of hair-splittingly

From hair-splitting + -ly.

Questions about hair-splittingly

What does hair-splittingly mean?
Hair-splittingly means in a hair-splitting way, characterized by exceedingly small differences, fine details, or edge cases of no seeming importance.
What part of speech is hair-splittingly?
Hair-splittingly is an adverb.

Words near hair-splittingly in the dictionary

  1. hair-shirts
  2. hair-splitter
  3. hair-splitters
  4. hair-splittery
  5. hair-splitting
  6. hair-splittingly
  7. hair-splittings
  8. hair-tidies
  9. hair-tidy
  10. hair-trigger
  11. hair-triggers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hair-splittingly (page history and authors). 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-splittingly.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hair-splittingly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hair-splittingly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.