Definition of "pettifogging" [pet•ti•fog•ging]

• Present participle of pettifog. (verb)

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• "This Mrs. Baxter called a pettifogging trick, and she pursued her parallel till the same terms were obviously indicated as appropriate to Quisanté's conduct."
• "'GRACCHUS,' as the town called him, was a broken-down lawyer, who, as he got old, had prostituted the talents of his early days to the meanest kind of pettifogging and rascality."
• "The pettifogging was also meant to counterbalance the Clinton White House's own ethical woes."