variants
or cavilling
as in critical
given to making or expressing unfavorable judgments about things
a caviling theater critic who has yet to see a play she likes
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
variants
or cavilling
as in complaining
to make often peevish criticisms or objections about matters that are minor, unimportant, or irrelevant
caviled for hours about a single sentence
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for caviling
Adjective
-
The initiative will help ensure reliable access to critical medicines, minerals, defense capabilities, and energy and microchips to power AI, Dimon said.—
Jordan Valinsky,
CNN Money,
13 Oct. 2025 -
Rare earth minerals are critical to military applications, as well as to semiconductor and auto industries.—
Miranda Jeyaretnam,
Time,
13 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
DeWanna Bonner earned a technical foul with six minutes remaining for complaining after a no-call on a second-chance attempt.—
Ben Pickman,
New York Times,
11 Oct. 2025
-
Not that Siegler is complaining.—
Jack Beresford,
MSNBC Newsweek,
10 Oct. 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
Verb
-
Should the pattern hold true throughout the long march to the Super Bowl, nobody’s going to be carping about the official headcount.—
Anthony Crupi,
Sportico.com,
19 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
My hypercritical brain took this imperfection and ran with it.—
Jailynn Taylor,
Allure,
26 June 2025
-
This has led to multiple fans getting hypercritical of the iconic wrestler, calling out his age and accusing him of simply being a product of former WCW president Eric Bischoff.—
Jeremy Hanna,
MSNBC Newsweek,
19 June 2025
Verb
-
There’s something moaning in the background.—
Brian Hiatt,
Rolling Stone,
10 Oct. 2025
-
The deputies ultimately roll him over before putting on handcuffs as Mull can be heard moaning in pain.—
Nathaniel Percy,
Oc Register,
26 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
His recommendation directly contradicts the current medical consensus that judicious Tylenol use in pregnancy remains safe.—
Edith Bracho-Sanchez,
CNN Money,
26 Sep. 2025
-
Bauer, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and her team called for more judicious use of the drug until the science is settled.—
Amy Maxmen,
ABC News,
23 Sep. 2025
Verb
-
Joy Randolph and John Early, as the two Afterlife Coordinators, have a quibbling charisma, but the movie should have done more with all its possible versions of paradise, figuring out how to use them comedically instead of just as easy punchlines.—
Owen Gleiberman,
Variety,
10 Sep. 2025
-
When the murder of 100,000 people, many of them women and children, is mentioned or denounced, or when someone dares to use terms such as genocide, ethnocide, ethnic cleansing or similar, most people choose to take issue with the characterization, quibbling over semantics.—
Uriel Kon
September 2,
Literary Hub,
2 Sep. 2025
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.
Cite this Entry
“Caviling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/caviling. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share