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What is "niggling"

Crossword clues for niggling

niggling
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
niggling
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a niggling doubt
▪ I couldn't shake off a niggling worry. Had I forgotten to lock the office door?
▪ The suspect seemed to have proved his innocence, but a niggling doubt remained in my mind.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Always, in the background, in the dim recesses of her mind, there had been that niggling doubt.
▪ Another niggling problem is their inconsistent approach to repeats.
▪ Croft took a year's sabbatical to recover from a string of niggling injuries and is now raring to go again.
▪ However, the fabulous goal-kicker is now much more mobile than he was last year when a niggling groin injury affected him.
▪ Lowell felt a niggling sense of betrayal.
▪ Nor did it remove the niggling suspicion that Isabel was hiding something.
▪ There was, however, a niggling doubt in the minds of some of the jurors.
▪ We flew back to Heathrow; it had not been a happy trip for me, full of niggling and snide remarks.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
niggling

niggling \nig"gling\, n. Finicky or pottering work; specif. (Fine Arts), Minute and very careful workmanship in drawing, painting, or the like, esp. when bestowed on unimportant detail.

Wiktionary
niggling

  1. petty n. A sensation that niggles. v

  2. (present participle of niggle English)

WordNet
niggling

adj. (informal terms) small and of little importance; "a fiddling sum of money"; "a footling gesture"; "our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war"; "a little (or small) matter"; "Mickey Mouse regulations"; "a dispute over niggling details"; "limited to petty enterprises"; "piffling efforts"; "giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction" [syn: fiddling, footling, lilliputian, little, Mickey Mouse, piddling, piffling, petty, picayune, trivial]

Usage examples of "niggling".

Despite the slight niggling sense of sinfulness that now and again flickered across her dyed-in-the-wool Protestant brain, she was at peace with herself.

Caralie frowned, a niggling ache appearing at the place where she'd banged her head.

Jewlan had a niggling suspicion that by entering the wrong combination she’d inadvertently triggered some sort of protective dampening field.

He follows down into warmth, into darkness, one question in the back of his mind, niggling as beggar's lice against bare skin.

Then again the Company had done her proud - no royal dockyard’s niggling over a halfpennyworth of tar - and her sumptuous refit, her new sails, new copper, beautiful Manilla cordage, had brought back much of her youth: it had not dealt with certain deep-seated structural defects, the result of age and the Marengo’s handling of her, but for the moment all was well, and she raced southwards as though she had a galleon in chase.

Then again the Company had done her proud - no royal dockyard's niggling over a halfpennyworth of tar - and her sumptuous refit, her new sails, new copper, beautiful Manilla cordage, had brought back much of her youth: it had not dealt with certain deep-seated structural defects, the result of age and the Marengo's handling of her, but for the moment all was well, and she raced southwards as though she had a galleon in chase.

Normally Mildred would be able to keep a cool head, but after the niggling provocation of the past couple of days, it was to prove almost impossible.

But a niggling part of his character told him that his dreams were mere illusions, and that reality was before him, three floors down and a hundred meters west, in the distant faces of children waiting to board the steam train to the park, and - but, no, such thoughts were aberrations.