pettifogulize

English

Etymology

From pettifog +‎ -ule +‎ -ize.

Verb

pettifogulize (third-person singular simple present pettifogulizes, present participle pettifogulizing, simple past and past participle pettifogulized)

1. (nonce word, obsolete) To act as a pettifogger; to use contemptible tricks.
   • 1853, Thomas De Quincey, “Introduction to the World of Strife”, in Autobiographic Sketches (De Quincey’s Works; I), London: James Hogg & Sons, →OCLC, page 59:

     So far from seeking to "pettifogulise"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations.

   • 1882, Sylvan Drey, Woman's Rights: A Strictly Original Comedy in Three Acts, Baltimore, →OCLC, page 21:

     On these high authorities I rest my case, and when I quote from these adjudications you will find to your dismay and horror that you are nothing but a pettifogulizing idiot.

   • [1885 April, E. P. Evans, “Christian Hermeneutics and Hebrew Literature”, in The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine, volume 23, number 4, Boston: Leonard C. Bowles, →OCLC, page 356:

     “To pettifogulize,” says De Quincey, “is to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster’s minute tortuosities of construction.” Hermeneutic theology, according to this definition, is mere pettifogulizing systematized and elevated to the dignity of a sacred science.]

   • 1885 June 17, J. W. Hamilton, “The One Exception to the Golden Rule”, in Zion's Herald, volume 62, number 24, Boston: Boston Wesleyan Association, →ISSN, page 190, column 5:

     I remember an attempt a few years ago to pettifogulize the Legislature in this State, when the small attorney met this unanswerable claim to representation by stating that he conceded the women had a right to be represented, but they were all represented now, for they had brothers or fathers or cousins or husbands, or ought to have, who could and did represent them.

   • 1908, Edwin C. Madden, The U. S. Government's Shame, Detroit: National Book Co., →OCLC, page 151:

     Is the case to be pettifogulized? Will this great government stifle evidence in a court of justice in order to convict a man?

   • 1941, Herbert Ellsworth Cory, The Emancipation of a Freethinker, Milwaukee: Bruce, →OCLC, page 22:

     And when, during the next semester, we were expected to read widely outside of class, but to pettifogulize (as I might have said then) with our professor over a handful of philological problems, though I roamed far abroad in the chivalric lais and romances, I was so frequently absent from our linguistic symposia that I had to be content with a rather disreputable grade.

   • 1981, Alexander Theroux, Darconville's Cat, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, →ISBN, page 553:

     But, oh my yes, women do often imagine that they love, and with all that faded and pettifogulizing ammunition of theirs—lipstick, rouge, pomade, and no end of swabbings from the stybian pot—pointedly set out to do so.

Further reading

• “pettifogulize”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.