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The term nitpicking is commonly used to describe when someone gets unnecessarily bogged down in the smallest details of something, generally ignoring the more important points.
It is extremely common these days, both in person and online. If you’ve ever argued with someone online about something you care about, and you write something well thought out, but then they just reply and point out that you used ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’, you’ve experienced nitpicking.
Sure, using proper spelling and grammar is important, but a small mistake like that doesn’t invalidate the rest of the argument.
It doesn’t always have to be entirely negative, though. When experts on a specific subject are discussing something, it is often very helpful to nitpick, as it can point out a small detail that may seem unimportant but actually matters very much in that context.
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As silly as it may seem, you see this all the time in fan communities for things like Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, or other franchises.
If someone says that a character is immortal, another fan may point out that this is inaccurate and that they are really just invulnerable. To an outside listener, this may seem unimportant, but to those within the ‘super fan’ community, it is an important distinction.
But what does nitpicking really mean? The answer is a bit grooser than you might expect. The term is first documented to appear back in teh 1950s and is simply the act of removing parasites.
A ‘nit’ is a word from Old English that refers to small eggs from lice. So, nitpicking is literally the picking out of lice eggs (or the lice themselves) from the hair of yourself or someone else.
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It is quite rare to literally nitpick today because there are special combs and treatments that are far more effective at removing or treating lice than just picking them out one by one.
For other primates, however, nitpicking is an important part of social bonding and establishing hierarchy within a community.
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