🗓️ Idiom: Nitpick (verb)
💬 Meaning
- To find small or unimportant faults in someone’s work.
- To focus too much on minor details instead of the bigger picture.
🧠 Example Sentences
- The manager started to nitpick every line of the report, which slowed the project down.
- Don’t nitpick your team’s work too much, it can lower motivation.
- She tends to nitpick during meetings, correcting small grammar errors instead of discussing key ideas.
🏛️ Origin
The term nitpick comes from the literal act of removing “nits” (tiny lice eggs) from hair; a task that requires careful attention to tiny details. Over time, it came to mean finding small or unnecessary faults in someone’s work or behaviour.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
It’s better to focus on the main goals instead of __________ every small mistake.
Answer
nitpicking
2. Choose the correct answer:
If someone is “nitpicking,” they are:
a) Ignoring small problems
b) Looking for small faults
c) Working quickly
Answer
b) Looking for small faults
3. Change the sentence using “nitpick”:
“He keeps pointing out tiny, unimportant errors in the document.”
Answer
He keeps nitpicking the document.
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Rob is a CELTA qualified English teacher with 15 years of international experience. He has a BSc and PGDip from Loughborough and St Andrews universities in the UK. He has taught in Thailand and Saudi Arabia and now works with professionals worldwide.
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