pettifogger
Example Sentences
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For nearly three years now, I’ve been fascinated by the performance art of this blustering pettifogger.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 17, 2023
“The noun pettifogger has two main senses: ‘A lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable; shyster’ and ‘one given to quibbling over trifles.’
From Washington Times ● Feb. 2, 2020
The verb was actually formed from the noun "pettifogger", which was used in the 16th Century to describe those who would argue over minor details in a fee.
From BBC ● Jan. 22, 2020
The learned editor apparently has a greater future as a pettifogger than as an attorney.
From Time Magazine Archive
They will cry That I’m a pettifogger, fortune-hunter, A beggar.—And besides it were not well To leave her in distress.
From The Comedies of Terence by George Colman
Quoting from Thomas Jefferson's diary reference to "soliciting pettifoggers," Joe Stamper of Antlers, Okla., urged his fellow lawyers not to "equate legal services with soap and breakfast foods."
From Time Magazine Archive
This would still the voices of those pettifoggers who will protest that Oswald was not actually proved guilty in a court of law.
From Time Magazine Archive
The perky clerks and smirking pettifoggers move apart on tiptoe, those to their respective stations, these to their privileged seats facing the high dais.
From Dr. Sevier by George Washington Cable
The lawyers are few; the pettifoggers are many.
From Lessons in Life A Series of Familiar Essays by Timothy Titcomb
But, what of the hundreds of thousands of minds that have been deformed for ever by the incapable pettifoggers who have pretended to form them!
From Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Vocabulary lists containing pettifogger
O'Reilly's Lexicon of Epithets
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True Grit
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"Old World Landowners" by Nikolai Gogol
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