caviling 1 of 2

variants or cavilling

caviling

2 of 2

verb

variants or cavilling
present participle of cavil

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for caviling
Adjective
  • Florida Republicans alongside President Donald Trump were handed another critical election win on Tuesday as Jimmy Patronis won the House race for Florida's 1st Congressional District.
    Josh Hammer, MSNBC Newsweek, 2 Apr. 2025
  • The Mavericks committed just five turnovers, but Brooklyn took advantage and turned them into seven points — a marginal yet critical edge in a game that featured 16 ties and 19 lead changes.
    C.J. Holmes, New York Daily News, 1 Apr. 2025
Verb
  • The irony of the quintessential real estate expert buying a home in the flight path of an international airport, then complaining about the noise, is not lost on the rest of Palm Beach County.
    Miami Herald Archives, Miami Herald, 8 Jan. 2025
  • That first-round pick became Merriman (although, the Giants aren't complaining).
    Ryan Morik, Fox News, 8 Jan. 2025
Adjective
  • So much of the new sobriety flex is anathema to the captious alcoholics of 12-step groups.
    Virginia Heffernan, Wired, 19 Apr. 2022
  • That a right-wing party traditionally captious about American patriotism did not react heatedly to evidence of Russian interference in US elections is bizarre.
    Darryl Pinckney, The New York Review of Books, 5 Nov. 2020
Adjective
  • While Pansy’s hypercritical diatribes can be hilarious at times, the emotional pain that clearly underlies her behavior is heartbreaking.
    Peter Debruge, Variety, 11 Jan. 2025
  • Especially as a woman online, a lot of people are so hypercritical of that sort of thing.
    Carly Thomas, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Oct. 2024
Adjective
  • The Football Observatory reports that the average transfer fee in the 2022/23 season approximated €4 million—a testament to the economic potential of judicious talent management.
    Priya Oberoi, Forbes.com, 27 Mar. 2025
  • As is often the case with slow-burn horror built on judicious restraint, those climactic events are arguably less effective in their relative explicitness than the preceding unease.
    Dennis Harvey, Variety, 11 Mar. 2025
Verb
  • The whining about everyone else didn’t help, either.
    Brian Moylan, Vulture, 31 Dec. 2024
  • Stop whining and thank your lucky stars for having a job.
    Lance Eliot, Forbes, 27 Dec. 2024
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Caviling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/caviling. Accessed 4 Apr. 2025.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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