Word.ws English Dictionary

split hairs

split hairs noun: tedious details; minutiae.

Noun

split hairs pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) Tedious details; minutiae.
    • The Microsoft trial had been in danger of slipping out of the public eye. Its endless procession of less-than-riveting economics professors and forgetful executives, mixed with scads of legal and technical split hairs, just hasn't made for gripping headlines.1999 February 4, Lev Grossman, “Microsoft Tangled Up in Videotape Evidence”, in Time

Verb

split hairs (third-person singular simple present splits hairs, present participle splitting hairs, simple past and past participle split hairs)

  1. (idiomatic) To consider or argue about fine details; to worry about minutiae.
    • Let's get everything sorted into the right drawers and not split hairs about subdividing it further yet.
    Synonyms:
    cavil

split hairs meaning in Hindi and Malayalam

split hairs in Hindi

to consider fine details
मीन-मेख निकालना mīn-mekh nikālnā

split hairs in Malayalam

cavil, quibble, carp
നിസ്സാരകാര്യങ്ങളെക്കുറിച്ചു തർക്കിക്കൽ, സന്നാഗ്ദ്ധോത്തരം, ഉപായം, തക്കിടി, ഉരുട്ട്, പിരട്ടുവാക്ക്

Synonyms of split hairs

Forms of split hairs

third-person singular presentsplits hairs
present participlesplitting hairs
past participlesplit hairs
pastsplit hairs

Questions about split hairs

What does split hairs mean?
Split hairs means tedious details; minutiae.
What is split hairs in Hindi?
Split hairs in Hindi is मीन-मेख निकालना (mīn-mekh nikālnā). See Split hairs meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is split hairs?
Split hairs can be a noun or a verb.

Words near split hairs in the dictionary

  1. split epimorphism
  2. split epimorphisms
  3. split ergativity
  4. split finger
  5. split fingers
  6. split hairs
  7. split hand syndrome
  8. split head
  9. split heads
  10. split horizon
  11. split infinitive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: split hairs (page history and authors); split hairs (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-split hairs.ogg.

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