technicality

Noun

technicality (countable and uncountable, plural technicalities)

1. The quality or state of being technical.
   • At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy ; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality into pabulum.1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter VIII, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC
   • Ha and Hyland suggest that technicality is not binary and it is not always possible to say that a word is technical or not.2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Position vectors, homologous chromosomes and gamma rays: Promoting disciplinary literacy through Secondary Phrase Lists”, in English for Specific Purposes, →DOI...

   Synonyms:

   technicalness

2. That which is technical, or peculiar to any trade, profession, sect, or the like.
   • the technicalities of the sect
   • [T]he names of places and horses and slangy technicalities of the turf, had interlarded the poor girl's brain-sick babble; […]1862 January – 1863 January, M[ary] E[lizabeth] Braddon, “Fighting the Battle”, in Aurora Floyd. […], volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1863, →OCLC, page 224
3. A minor detail, rule, law, etc., seemingly insignificant to a non-specialist but which has significant consequences in larger matters.
   • These are some of the "Reversible Errors" on which a new trial can be had and are often spoken of by misinformed business men as "technicalities," as when they say a certain gangster "got off on a technicality" or "got a new trial on a technicality."1948, David K. Breed, The Trial of Christ from Legal and Scriptural Viewpoint, Library of Alexandria, →ISBN, page 8
   • Mommsen believed that Claudius had been an augur who was ordered by a chief pontiff Metellus to inaugurate Sulpicius son of Servius as a priest, that Claudius declined on grounds of a religious technicality, that Claudius was subsequently fined by the chief pontiff, and that Claudius appealed the...1996, Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton, Imperium Sine Fine, Franz Steiner Verlag, →ISBN, page 75