cavil
IPA: kˈævʌɫ
noun
- A petty or trivial objection or criticism.
verb
- (intransitive) To criticise for petty or frivolous reasons.
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Examples of "cavil" in Sentences
- The association of Brother Cavil's name with the word 'cavil' seems almost irresistible.
- But is it too much to ask its friends for support—this time, for once, without cavil or reservation?
- I have only a cavil with George Amos's response Letters , Sept. 3, which quotes Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech.
- One can cavil that Mr. Hamner relies too much on instances of big-army conventional warfare to argue this assertion.
- Unlike Albany, where the insiders rule without cavil, California voters have imposed a two-thirds vote requirement for the legislature to raise taxes.
- And if they cavil at it, as MPs have cavilled and continue to cavil at the detection of their felonies, they may yet discover what the whoosh of the guillotine blade sounds like.
- Though counts may cavil and marquises moan, the Spanish parliament, backed by the Spanish electorate, has now put a stop to this kind of discrimination – a policy powerfully endorsed by the king though succession in the monarchy remains, for the moment, exempt from reform.
- Forgive the cavil, but I can't help feeling that schools facing the most savage cuts in several generations as a direct result of the actions of banks such as Lloyds would have preferred to retain a music department, say, than the chance to share in the magic of the Lloyds story.
- To those, yes, American democrats who quibble, cavil, and lose themselves in conjecture over the risks to which the judge who allows a criminal to live subjects honest people, we countered with Maïmonides's axiom: "It is more satisfying to acquit thousands of the guilty than to execute one sole innocent man."
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