Hypercriticism

noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Excessive or unfairly harsh criticism. countable, uncountable

    "Near-synonyms: (quibbling type) cavillation, cavilling, nitpicking, nitpickery, pettifogging, pettifoggery, hairsplitting, hair-splittery, splitting hairs; (demolishing type) excoriation, excoriating, bashing, trashing"

  2. 2
    Excessive or unfairly harsh criticism. wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
;animadversionaspersionbad noticesbad pressbashing

Example

More examples

"Near-synonyms: (quibbling type) cavillation, cavilling, nitpicking, nitpickery, pettifogging, pettifoggery, hairsplitting, hair-splittery, splitting hairs; (demolishing type) excoriation, excoriating, bashing, trashing"

Etymology

From hyper- + criticism.

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