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Meanings of niggling in English
(Informal) small and of little importance.
Related terms
Synonyms
Examples for "little"
Examples for "little"
1
Europe is a different competition and little errors can change the game.
2
The case poses little if any threat to human health, officials said.
3
And some believe market actually picked up a little bit last year.
4
The group also had little time for talk of the euro crisis.
5
The government has so far given away little detail of its plans.
1
Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett said the group were playing petty politics.
2
Which was true, of course, and petty of me to bring up.
3
I don't have time to resolve these petty family squabbles right now.
4
Oppression, daily petty harassment and humiliation are the breeding ground for violence.
5
The provost, however, had never wasted his time with such petty artifice.
1
Consumers are 'overwhelmed with relatively trivial choices' says a professor of psychology.
2
Did he think her family morally trivial for keeping a clean house?
3
Changes to the Constitution are not done for trivial or transient reasons.
4
I only quote this as a trivial example of observation and inference.
5
There's a tendency to attribute far too much importance to trivial developments.
1
Guess that means I can finally start fiddling with your financial records.
2
I may have helped it freeze by fiddling with certain environmental controls.
3
He was fiddling with the carriage release, exasperated, tugging at the paper.
4
But once you start fiddling with the facts, it's hard to stop.
5
Rupert bristled at the order, but he began fiddling with a console.
1
He felt himself bound and pricked by a thousand delicate lilliputian bonds.
2
This is a pity, as their lilliputian self-assertion is most amusing.
3
In the middle of the lilliputian ranks the giant smoke-clouds leap like hellish gods.
4
This kite system is like fitting a gigantic sail to a lilliputian boat, d'ye see?
5
The lilliputian vehicles are ubiquitous in Japan - and they would be here, if Detroit had any sense.
1
That is not patriotism, but a picayune partisanship which I profoundly pity.
2
You kant show the poor man he's ever took a picayune from.
3
No, sir, it's hot your picayune drop o' spirits that's talkin'-it'sme.
4
He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune about him.
5
Then tossing her a picayune, he said, take that, Aunt Dilsey.
1
Humanity was far too obsessed with numerous piddling things of no interest.
2
A piddling string of munition factories in New York and New Jersey.
3
She was sitting at a table, piddling with a deck of cards.
4
All they've got usually is piddling little Morris Eights or Austin Sevens.
5
You're highly unlikely to do time, especially given your piddling payouts.
1
Inland & Armco, two relatively piffling corporations had not yet boosted prices.
2
I've got out of dead-and-alive Wolvercote at last-stupidCouncillors and piffling necromancers!
3
The Taoiseach and Mr Molloy see it as a piffling matter.
4
Don't be an old maid, Ern, with your piffling German conscientiousness.
5
The poor Central Bank of Ireland only holds a piffling $90 million.
1
She felt it was a footling question even as she asked it.
2
I'm not such an ass as to fall off a footling balcony.
3
Despite Lhel's efforts, the second child came wrong way around, a footling breach.
4
For these two years, therefore, C na T has spent its time footling.
5
Fidgeting, footling, while a companion looked on, and occasionally shifted position.
Usage of niggling in English
1
Everything from diet to niggling little health problems could be causing problems.
2
I need it ASAP. The U.S. case had left a niggling fear.
3
Unfortunately, the beauty of the concept is marred by two niggling problems.
4
But no matter how much sense I made, the niggling had started.
5
Yet there was something niggling about Elder's demeanor, a small discordant something.
6
So why did I still have a niggling doubt in my mind?
7
The niggling feeling he's articulating has been at him for some time.
8
So he picked another niggling doubt at the back of his mind.
9
And I'm not in a state to go on niggling about it.
10
But any little niggling scruple is more to you than I am.
11
We've had a few niggling injuries but they have been rectified now.
12
Miller nodded, but something was niggling at the back of his mind.
13
Well, then there was that niggling business over why he had returned.
14
All United had to comfort themselves was finally beating a niggling rival.
15
But I could never quite remove the niggling doubt, you know?
16
Weeding out niggling problems is not unusual for ambitious, budding businesses.
About this term
Frequent collocations
Niggling through the time
Niggling across language varieties
Ireland
Common
United States of America
Less common
United Kingdom
Rare