What's the difference between nitpick and quibble?

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.

Quibble


Definition:

  • (n.) A shift or turn from the point in question; a trifling or evasive distinction; an evasion; a cavil.
  • (n.) A pun; a low conceit.
  • (v. i.) To evade the point in question by artifice, play upon words, caviling, or by raising any insignificant or impertinent question or point; to trifle in argument or discourse; to equivocate.
  • (v. i.) To pun; to practice punning.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And please don’t quibble about whether you have any direct lineage to the architects of racism.
  • (2) Quibbling over whether fashion is more or less important than art is just as pointless as questioning whether or not it is art.
  • (3) And with four years as her nation’s chief diplomat on the world stage under her belt, Mrs Clinton’s personal gravitas is even harder to quibble with than it might have been in 2008.
  • (4) Dammers learned that Mandela had just one quibble with the Special AKA song.
  • (5) Other quibbles: some iPhone apps don't scale so brilliantly to such a large screen.
  • (6) To quibble further, one might say, is to simply argue about hinges.
  • (7) I find myself wondering how far I should go to say that FGM is the slicing off on a conscious young girl with no anaesthetic of her clitoris and labia... “This is a quibble about a couple of stitches and it is a complete distraction.” Mr Justice Sweeney, in summing up to the jury on Wednesday, said everyone accepted Dharmasena had saved the life of the woman’s baby in an emergency delivery on 24 November, 2012.
  • (8) "While I do quibble with the ethics (or lack of ethics) in posting the Salinger stories, they look to be true transcripts of the originals and match my own copies."
  • (9) You have explained how you have got caught up in this thing, you've explained your motives: I don't want to quibble about any of that.
  • (10) Even the US administration, which has repeatedly played up the uncertainties in climate science, has not quibbled with the inclusion of statements such as "human activities since 1750 have very likely (>90%) exerted a net warming influence on climate", and "further emissions of greenhouse gases would be expected to change the climate of the 21st century".
  • (11) No one could quibble with the report’s section on geopolitics.
  • (12) Certainly, some will quibble as to how much blame the federal government should receive for this economic downturn.
  • (13) But there's a bigger problem with the politics of idleness than quibbling over definitions.
  • (14) The next question is also on inflation but is a bit quibbly: what if inflation is like, you know, really big?
  • (15) Oh, there are quibbles, so many quibbles, some unfortunately presentational.
  • (16) Homewatt.co.uk sells LED bulbs and if you don't think they are suitable, use its seven-day no-quibble returns policy to get your money back.
  • (17) And for the hopefuls lining up outside the passport office: thou shalt not quibble about freedom of speech.
  • (18) But the deeper flaw was a complacent assumption that Labour was the moral choice, and that people would realise as much if only their misguided quibbles about public spending could be neutralised.
  • (19) Some quibbled about the methodology, but, taken at face value, the test yielded good and bad results.
  • (20) It's an understandable stance, since to quibble over the reasons why 15 million died in the first world war may well look unseemly, particularly for a politician hoping that his party replaces Gove's as government next year, but it doesn't have much of the lion about it.

Words possibly related to "nitpick"