Word.ws English Dictionary

hairsplitting

hairsplitting is the alternative form of hair-splitting.

hairsplitting is the present participle and gerund of hairsplit.

Meaning of hair-splitting

Noun

hair-splitting (countable and uncountable, plural hair-splittings)

  1. (derogatory, idiomatic) 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

See all 2 meanings of hair-splitting

Meaning of hairsplit

Verb

hairsplit (third-person singular simple present hairsplits, present participle hairsplitting, simple past and past participle hairsplit)

  1. (transitive) To make fine distinctions concerning.
    • The real criticism of your article is not only your attitude of mind as expressed therein, but also in dealing with details and inclination to hairsplit minor matters1922, Sons of the Revolution in State of Virginia Quarterly Magazine, page 28
  2. (intransitive) To split hairs.
    • How vividly with the recital of these old customs memory reverts to the other quaint and fantastic forms New England piety took on — to the pastor who could hairsplit by the hour 'twixt Free Will and Election1884, Clarence Deming, By-ways of Nature and Life, page 225

See all 3 meanings of hairsplit

Forms of hairsplitting

pluralhairsplittings

Origin of hairsplitting

From hair + splitting.

Questions about hairsplitting

What is hairsplitting the alternative form of?
Hairsplitting is the alternative form of hair-splitting.

Words near hairsplitting in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hairsplitting (page history and authors); hair-splitting (page history and authors); hairsplit (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: “hairsplitting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hairsplitting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.