pettifogger

Other forms of pettifogger

plural

pettifoggers·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about pettifogger

What does pettifogger mean?

pettifogger means "a person (especially a lawyer or politician) who uses unscrupulous or unethical methods". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in pettifogger?

pettifogger has 4 syllables: pet-ti-fog-ger. The stress falls on "ti".

What is another word for pettifogger?

Close synonyms include shyster, quibbler, caviller, caviler. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pettifogger a common word?

pettifogger is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.