1. When a person is described as Captious, the sense is usually of nitpicking at faults or raising petty objections.

2. A lot of older people are crotchety because they've been complaining all their lives. (Down in Florida, my mother describes condo-association bickering as 'nitpicking in paradise.

3. Caviling pettifoggers and quiggling pleaders / her nagging and carping attack / thought her editor unnecessarily nitpicking / a pettifogging lawyer's mind / had no patience with quibbling critics Similar:

4. Why, just after nitpicking about what they thought to be a shocking infraction of the Sabbath regulation, the Pharisees took counsel against Jesus “that they might destroy him.”