| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| cavil |
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| SYLLABICATION: | cav·il |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  k v  l |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: cav·iled also cav·illed, cav·il·ing, cav·il·ling, cav·ils, cav·ils
| | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | To find fault unnecessarily; raise trivial objections. See synonyms at quibble. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | To quibble about; detect petty flaws in. | | NOUN: | A carping or trivial objection. | | ETYMOLOGY: | French caviller, from Old French, from Latin cavill r , to jeer, from cavilla, a jeering. | | OTHER FORMS: | cavil·er —NOUN
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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