My friend told me that he wanted to expand his vocabulary. In order to do this, he has a "word of the day." Such exercises do nothing for me since I already possess an expansive vocabulary, but what the hell?
I suppose when you text me in the morning with random words of the day, I'm inclined to blog about them. Or maybe I'm just using this as an excuse to blog about something.
In either case, today's word is niggling.
According to the dictionary, niggling is something trivial, petty, and inconsequential. It could also mean you spend too much time and effort on issues that don't warrant such attention.
My best definition would probably be, a minor irritant. It's an adjective to describe the severity of a problem. On the scale of "not a problem" to "very much a problem," it's probably in the former. When you describe something as "niggling," it kind of annoys you in the "lurking in the back of your mind" kind of way. You could ignore it, since it's not a deal breaker, but you'd rather not deal with it.
Case in point, my car. It has one niggling little issue, it drifts right. You can barely notice it, but when you drive on the far right lane, that's when you definitely feel it. I have to keep the wheel quite a ways left just to maintain course. I think the wheel alignment is off, or perhaps the problem could be more fundamental.
Yeah, it irritates the crap out of me, but I could ignore it easily enough. I just wish that I didn't have to deal with such a...
Niggling thing.
