Definition of "cavillation" []

• The act of cavilling (noun)

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• "Grammar concerning the kinds of words, their derivations, deflexions, and syntax; specially enriching the same with the helps of several languages, with their differing proprieties of words, phrases, and tropes; they might have found out more and better footsteps of common reason, help of disputation, and advantages of cavillation, than many of these which they have propounded."
• "But who should do thus, I confess, should requite the objections made against poets, with like cavillation against philosophers; as likewise one should do, that should bid one read"
• "The charges were based on sermons spread over two or three years, a circumstance which of itself suggests that the prosecution had been got up for ulterior government purposes; that it was a 'forged cavillation,' as Bruce called it in his pulpit in"