pettifogulize

present singular third person pettifogulizes · participle present pettifogulizing · participle past pettifogulized · past pettifogulized

1. nonce wordobsoleteTo act as a pettifogger; to use contemptible tricks.

   Is the case to be pettifogulized? Will this great government stifle evidence in a court of justice in order to convict a man?

   1908, Edwin C. Madden, The U. S. Government's Shame, Detroit: National Book Co., →OCLC, page 151

   5 more examples

   So far from seeking to "pettifogulise"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations.

   1853, Thomas De Quincey, “Introduction to the World of Strife”, in Autobiographic Sketches (De Quincey’s Works; I), London: James Hogg & Sons, →OCLC, page 59

   On these high authorities I rest my case, and when I quote from these adjudications you will find to your dismay and horror that you are nothing but a pettifogulizing idiot.

   1882, Sylvan Drey, Woman's Rights: A Strictly Original Comedy in Three Acts, Baltimore, →OCLC, page 21

   “To pettifogulize,” says De Quincey, “is to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster’s minute tortuosities of construction.” Hermeneutic theology, according to this definition, is mere pettifogulizing systematized and elevated to the dignity of a sacred science.

   [1885 April, E. P. Evans, “Christian Hermeneutics and Hebrew Literature”, in The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine, volume 23, number 4, Boston: Leonard C. Bowles, →OCLC, page 356

   I remember an attempt a few years ago to pettifogulize the Legislature in this State, when the small attorney met this unanswerable claim to representation by stating that he conceded the women had a right to be represented, but they were all represented now, for they had brothers or fathers or cousins or husbands, or ought to have, who could and did represent them.

   1885 June 17, J. W. Hamilton, “The One Exception to the Golden Rule”, in Zion's Herald, volume 62, number 24, Boston: Boston Wesleyan Association, →ISSN, page 190, column 5

   And when, during the next semester, we were expected to read widely outside of class, but to pettifogulize (as I might have said then) with our professor over a handful of philological problems, though I roamed far abroad in the chivalric lais and romances, I was so frequently absent from our linguistic symposia that I had to be content with a rather disreputable grade.

   1941, Herbert Ellsworth Cory, The Emancipation of a Freethinker, Milwaukee: Bruce, →OCLC, page 22