- This article is about physical nitpicking, for the sport, see Nitpicking (sport).
Nitpicking is the act of removing nits (the eggs of lice, though in this case specifically head lice) from one's hair. The original way of treating a person for head lice was to remove each nit one at a time from the hair. This was a slow and meticulous process, and new methods that take less time have been developed in more recent times.
"Nitpicker" as a term seems not to have been used until 1951, and it seems to be predominantly used in the United States of America (see the OED). Thus while the term nitpicker presumably was coined as an allusion to the activity of removing louse eggs and larvae from one's fellows, the etymology does not trace back to that onerous activity of days of poor hygiene.
In modern times, the word isn't widely used in the sense of removing head lice anymore, but rather refers to unjustified criticism that is very meticulous.
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