"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."
Showing posts with label quibbly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quibbly. Show all posts

Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Quibble

 
I was asked to define quibble for my readers.

To quibble is to argue over petty things; to make trivial or minor complaints, objections or arguments; to complain or argue in a trivial or petty manner.

"I won't quibble about the cost of the phone if you'll only stop making those International calls. "

What I didn't know when I was asked was that there was an adjective derived from quibble - quibbly. Quibbly means fussy, involving quibbles; petty or trifling. What a great word - "Look darling, it's only a dress; stop being so quibbly about whether your bum looks big or not."

The following is another (to me, totally incomprehensible,) definition. A quibble is the quantum computing term for the aggregation of four qubits, or half a qubyte. This follows the standard computing nomenclature of bit, nibble and byte.