Word.ws English Dictionary

hairsplitter

hairsplitter noun: a stickler person who makes extremely, possibly excessively, fine distinctions (who would separate something as fine as a hair into two pieces and distinguish them).

Noun

hairsplitter (plural hairsplitters)

  1. A stickler person who makes extremely, possibly excessively, fine distinctions (who would separate something as fine as a hair into two pieces and distinguish them).

Forms of hairsplitter

pluralhairsplitters
alternative formhair-splitter

Origin of hairsplitter

From hair + splitter.

Questions about hairsplitter

What does hairsplitter mean?
Hairsplitter means a stickler person who makes extremely, possibly excessively, fine distinctions (who would separate something as fine as a hair into two pieces and distinguish them).
What part of speech is hairsplitter?
Hairsplitter is a noun.
What is the plural of hairsplitter?
The plural of hairsplitter is hairsplitters.

Words near hairsplitter in the dictionary

  1. hairslide
  2. hairslides
  3. hairsnake
  4. hairsplit
  5. hairsplits
  6. hairsplitter
  7. hairsplitters
  8. hairsplitting
  9. hairsplittings
  10. hairspray
  11. hairsprayed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hairsplitter (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.

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