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• n  making too fine distinctions of little importance
  they didn't take his hairsplitting seriously
• s  developed in excessively fine detail

• In the intricate world of the law, a world of hairsplitting distinctions where the President is famously at home, it just may be so.
• But the armed correspondents maintain that such ethical hairsplitting is irrelevant to their workaday peril.
• All this hairsplitting is not without its dangers, though.

• word-splitting
• finespun

News & Articles

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• Scarcity: the state of being scarce or in short supply
  There was an interesting segment on NPR this past week entitled “How Scarcity Trap Affects Our Thinking, Behavior.” I’d happened upon it in a moment of quasi-irritation as the highlighted phrase designed to get our attention seemed to be hairsplitting a point. This always annoys me.
  Jan. 9, 2014 - The Michigan City News-Dispatch

Quotes

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• Fabian Nunez in Washington Post
  Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, said he was disappointed: "Legal hairsplitting has prevailed over the interests of children."
• Jose Maria Sison in ABS CBN News
  In my case, there is hairsplitting. I am a recognized political refugee. Even the Dutch government states that. In 1995, the highest court in the Netherlands reiterated its position that I am a political refugee under Article 1 A,Sison said.