NIGGLING • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Niggling

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noun

niggling n. Finicky or pottering work; specif. (Fine Arts), Minute and very careful workmanship in drawing, painting, or the like, esp. when bestowed on unimportant detail.

verb

Niggle v. t. (past & past part. niggled; pres. part. niggling) To trifle with; to deceive; to mock. (Obs.)

Niggle v. t.

To use, spend, or do in a petty or trifling manner.

To elaborate excessively, as in art.

Niggle v. i.

To trifle or play. "Take heed, daughter, You niggle not with your conscience and religion."

To act or walk mincingly. (Prov. Eng.)

To fret and snarl about trifles. (Prov. Eng.)

(Chiefly Eng.) To move about restlessly or without result; to fidget.

To be finicky or excessively critical; to potter; esp., to work with excessive care for trifling details, as in painting.

adjective

Niggling adj.

Petty, trivial, or inconsequential.

Excessively demanding of time or attention; as, niggling little details.

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Etymology of 'Niggling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Niggling" Quotes from Famous Books

... critic's quality. No task can well be harder than to take a poem, a stanza, or a line, to decide "Just here lies the strength, the charm; or just here the looseness, the defect." In any but the strongest hands these methods ensure mere niggling ingenuity, in which all appreciation of the broader purposes of the author—of Aristotle's 'universal'—disappears, while the critic reveals himself as an industrious pick-thank person concerned with ...

— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... le-Duc's little props are reduced to 1 ft. 2 in. by 1 ft. 6 in. Relative proportions are changed as well as sadly reduced. The result is that they are ludicrous. Moreover, instead of sinking his facade modestly—a little, eighteen inches would have been enough—he has carried the face of his niggling little buttresses flush with the massive walls of the great towers. I wished I could have had M. Viollet-le-Duc there by both his ears and knocked his head against the abomination he has created. He had a splendid opportunity, and ...

— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... if anything has caused you to change your mind—to be sorry for what you said, why should I not know it? Even a petty thief may be heard in his own defence. I loved you because I believed you to be a woman, a great, strong, noble, man's woman, above little things, above the little, niggling, contemptible devices of the drawing-room. I loved you because the great things of the world interested you, because you had no place in your life for petty graces, petty affectations, petty deceits and shams and insincerities. ...

— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris