verb
definition
To make fine distinctions concerning.
definition
To split hairs.
noun
definition
The act of considering or arguing about fine details, or worrying about minutiae.
Examples of hairsplitting in a Sentence
Hairsplitting, even when mischievous in intent, leads to distinctions of value.
In every branch of human effort the mania for hairsplitting and classification is harmful and even impossible, as in the attempt to distinguish between practice and science!
But nominalism was powerless to inspire theology with new life; on the contrary, its intervention only increased the inextricable tangle of the hairsplitting questions with which theology busied itself, and made their solution more and more impossible.
This dialectic, initiated by Euclides, became more and more opposed to the testimony of experience; in the hands of Eubulides and Alexinus it degenerated into hairsplitting, mainly in the form of the reductio ad absurdum.