Word of the Day

Thursday July 16, 2009

pettifogger [PET-ee-fog-ur]

noun

A person, especially a lawyer or politician, who uses unscrupulous or unethical methods.
A person who raises annoying petty objections.

Here they come, the small army of legalistic nitpickers and pettifoggers, dancing around after Wayne O'Donoghue as he's released from the Midlands Prison after serving three minutes -- sorry, years -- for the manslaughter of schoolboy Robert Holohan, all clambering over one another in their race to insist that he has paid his debt to society and should therefore be given every indulgence and the benefit of every doubt as he settles down to his new life.

"Forgiveness can't be obligatory", Sunday Independent, Jan 20, 2008
Social Security will never get fixed unless all Republicans and Democrats, down to the most pathetic of pettifoggers in Congress, publicly acknowledge that many people will feel pain.

Dennis Byrne, "If our pols don't get a backbone", Chicago Tribune, May 9, 2005
The lawyer's messenger is commonly, as was Simonnin, a lad of thirteen or fourteen, who, in every office, is under the special jurisdiction of the managing clerk, whose errands and /billets-doux/ keep him employed on his way to carry writs to the bailiffs and petitions to the Courts. He is akin to the street boy in his habits, and to the pettifogger by fate.

Honore de Balzac, (1799 - 1850) A French novelist and playwright. Dedication (1832)

Origin of the Word

Pettifogger, approximately 1586 probably derives from English 'petty' + obsolete 'fogger', "pettifogger".