Quibble
A petty objection, or a play on words used to evade the point.
A quibble is an objection that turns on a trivial distinction, and in older usage a pun exploited to dodge an argument. Samuel Johnson used the word in the second sense when he complained that a quibble was to Shakespeare "the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it".
Both senses share a mechanism: attention is redirected from the substance of a claim to the wording of it. In debate, quibbling is a recognised evasion — conceding nothing while appearing to engage.
The word is not always pejorative in technical writing, where a quibble may flag a small but genuine imprecision. The signal is proportion: a quibble stated as a quibble is honest; a quibble presented as a refutation is not.
Common mistake: mistaking definitional precision for quibbling. When a term's meaning determines the outcome of an argument, clarifying it is the argument, not a dodge from it.
“A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller.”
Keep reading the glossary
An explicit definition, mid-argument, of a term the speaker will then rely on — narrowing the sense to prevent ambiguity.
The rhetorical name for the pun — a play on words that exploits sound similarity or multiple meanings.
A rhetorical expression of genuine or feigned doubt about how to proceed — the speaker stops to wonder aloud.
The repetition of a word within a short passage, with a different meaning each time.