Hair-splitting

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    the act of finding exceedingly small differences which are probably neither important nor noticeable to most people. countable, idiomatic, uncountable

    "2006, Ian Aitken, in The Guardian, Richard Clements Obituary Dick's Tribune poked endless fun at the hair-splitting sectarianism of the various Trotskyist groups jostling on the fringes of the Labour party at that time."

Synonyms

All synonyms
ambiguityfault-findingfinehair-splitterylegalisticnice

Example

More examples

"2006, Ian Aitken, in The Guardian, Richard Clements Obituary Dick's Tribune poked endless fun at the hair-splitting sectarianism of the various Trotskyist groups jostling on the fringes of the Labour party at that time."

Etymology

* From the gerund form of split hairs

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.