"pettifog" meaning in All languages combined

See pettifog on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

IPA: /ˈpɛt.iˌfɒɡ/ [UK] Forms: pettifogs [present, singular, third-person], pettifogging [participle, present], pettifogged [participle, past], pettifogged [past]
Etymology: Back-formation of pettifogger. Etymology templates: {{back-form|en|pettifogger}} Back-formation of pettifogger Head templates: {{en-verb|++}} pettifog (third-person singular simple present pettifogs, present participle pettifogging, simple past and past participle pettifogged)
  1. (intransitive) To quibble over trivial matters; nitpick. Tags: intransitive Translations (to quibble): avocasser (French)
    Sense id: en-pettifog-en-verb-xs6BIwY3 Categories (other): English back-formations, English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with French translations Disambiguation of English back-formations: 56 44 Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 83 17 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 78 22 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 69 31 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 91 9 Disambiguation of Terms with French translations: 79 21 Disambiguation of 'to quibble': 92 8
  2. (intransitive) To do a petty business as a lawyer, or carry out law business in a petty or tricky way. Tags: intransitive
    Sense id: en-pettifog-en-verb-7ZMi8L0F
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: squabble Related terms: pettifogger

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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  "etymology_text": "Back-formation of pettifogger.",
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          "ref": "1959 April 24, Walt Kelly, Pogo, comic strip, →ISBN, page 35:",
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          "type": "quote"
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        "To quibble over trivial matters; nitpick."
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        "(intransitive) To quibble over trivial matters; nitpick."
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          "_dis1": "92 8",
          "code": "fr",
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        "(intransitive) To do a petty business as a lawyer, or carry out law business in a petty or tricky way."
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      "ipa": "/ˈpɛt.iˌfɒɡ/",
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        "(intransitive) To quibble over trivial matters; nitpick."
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      "code": "fr",
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      "sense": "to quibble",
      "word": "avocasser"
    }
  ],
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}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-02 using wiktextract (32c88e6 and 633533e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.