Definition of pettifogging in English:

adjective

• Placing undue emphasis on petty details.

  ‘pettifogging attorneys were the bane of civil society’

  ‘I'm working on the broad business vision here, not pettifogging little details’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Their concern was brushed off as a pettifogging detail rather than an understandable concern.’
  • ‘The one thing that Labour has been entirely consistent about is its pettifogging parliamentarism, its proceduralism, its gradualism and its timidity before capital and the Establishment.’
  • ‘Only the most Lilliputian of political outlooks could consider these kind of pettifogging government measures ‘bold and far-reaching’.’
  • ‘Either they have no idea what is at stake, or they place pettifogging bureaucracy above all else.’
  • ‘These concerns for purity should not be understood as pettifogging legalism.’

  Synonyms

  trivial, unimportant, insignificant, inconsequential, petty, minor, of little account, of no account, of little consequence, of no consequence, not worth mentioning, not worth bothering about, light, footling, fiddling, pettifogging, incidental