Pettifogulize
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To act as a pettifogger; to use contemptible tricks. nonce-word, obsolete
"So far from seeking to "pettifogulise"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations."
Example
More examples"So far from seeking to "pettifogulise"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations."
Etymology
From pettifog + -ule + -ize.
More for "pettifogulize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.