What's the difference between nitpick and pettifog?

Nitpick


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Not to nitpick, but this is missing the point of prosecution entirely.
  • (2) Read more The Archers summed it up very neatly when Helen gave evidence, saying: “Rob told me what I could eat, what I could wear, even where I would have my baby.” In any relationship there will be criticism, nitpicking and rows – but they are not relentless, like this.
  • (3) Nitpicking around the edges of a tiny budget is not an arts policy.
  • (4) They were scenes of great jubilation and it feels like nitpicking to point out the victory songs did not extend to serenading Moyes.
  • (5) But they are also cautious, aware that more and more UK employers now resort to legal action, nitpicking strike ballots in the American fashion for procedural errors.
  • (6) He swatted away nitpicking questions of fact, whispering such sweet reason that even the formal reprimand from the official statistics watchdog over the misleading claim that quitting Europe would allow us to “have back” £350m in membership fees began to seem like just one more opinion.
  • (7) "The Lords' decision recognises the effort and care with which the Journal's reporters and editors produced the story, and the importance of giving news organisations an incentive to produce serious journalism on compelling subjects of public concern without the risk of nitpicking and second guessing by courts years later."
  • (8) Maurice Allen, the chairman of the Poundbury Residents' Association, said he felt that some of the people who are complaining about their homes were "nitpicking".
  • (9) Make sure we know Aside from increasing the percentage of votes he wins, the second thing that Sanders needs to do is increase public awareness of his wins (and minimise nitpicking coverage – like this article – which adds caveats to his successes).
  • (10) Called to account, Sean Spicer dismissed the resulting outrage as the grumbling of “nitpickers”.
  • (11) Is the endless aggro that cab drivers get from some passengers really just a desperate attempt to overcompensate for the impotence of the backseat, to assert superiority – if only by nitpicking about whether this really is the fastest route to the station?
  • (12) The country is safer for it.” Spicer also attempted to defend a security decision to detain a young child, insisting: “The point is that you that can go through and nitpick, this individual or this, but that’s why we slow it down a little and to make sure that, if they are a five-year-old, that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat.
  • (13) As such, it looks like nitpicking to point out the ways Hyperloop ignores the lessons of conventional rail projects.
  • (14) Then, warming to their task, the British army of eurosceptics and nitpicking economists pronounce that the real test will be Italy rather than Greece.
  • (15) It's easy to nitpick and say we should have moved say BBC3 here etc, but we are where we are."
  • (16) Above all, he needs to get to grips with a profound gap between a terrifyingly ambitious project to forever re-tilt the balance between public and private, and Labour politicians who only seem able to take one of three options – staying silent, taking issue with the coalition's plans only on the basis of nitpicking, or making internecine mischief.

Pettifog


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To do a petty business as a lawyer; also, to do law business in a petty or tricky way.
  • (v. t.) To advocate like a pettifogger; to argue trickily; as, to pettifog a claim.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) An Israeli commentator said of the first of them: "when one looks through all the lofty phraseology, all the deliberate disinformation, the hundreds of pettifogging sections, sub-sections, appendices and protocols, one clearly recognises that the Israeli victory was absolute and Palestine defeat abject."
  • (2) He’s the ultimate Gary Stu character: a billionaire beholden to no one and able to abuse every disingenuous and pettifogging remora latched headfirst on the nation and sucking upward.

Words possibly related to "nitpick"

Words possibly related to "pettifog"