Yesterday I had used the word "niggle" to mean "to argue over petty things," which I do see as a definition in Dictionary.com.

However, I had OED opened at the moment, so I looked it up there, and for the "verb 1" (which I took to mean the more important definition), it said, "to have sexual intercourse with a man or a woman," coming from 1567, but there was also a 1931 use from Amer. Tramp. & Underworld Slang 263, where they used it as to "hump and niggle."

I surely hadn't seen it used that way before! I clicked on "Verb 2" and it had these definitions:

~ To do something in a painstaking, finicky, fussy, or ineffective manner; to trifle, fiddle; to waste effort or time on petty details.

~ To go about or keep moving along in a fiddling or ineffective manner; (esp. of a horse) to amble. Now Sc. and Eng. regional (rare).

~ trans. Eng. regional (chiefly north.) and Sc. (Shetland). To cut ineffectually, to hack

~ To get on tolerably with a person. Obs. rare.

~ trans. Horse Racing. To twitch (the reins) continually; to coax (a horse) along in this way. Also intr. with implied object.

~ trans. a. slang. To cheat, trick. Obs

~ To draw out (money) unwillingly (obs.); to eke out; to get by haggling. Now rare (Eng. regional in later use).

~ trans. To execute in a finicky manner, or with excessive attention to detail. Obs.

~ trans. To behave ingratiatingly or courteously towards; to make a fuss of, pamper. Also (intr.): to flirt, behave provocatively. Obs.

~ intr. To cause slight but persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety; to nag; to complain, esp. in a petty or trifling way; to be unnecessarily critical or overprecise. Freq. with at.

~ trans. To annoy, irritate; (esp. of a defect, shortcoming, injury, etc.) to be a source of slight but persistent irritation.

How are you supposed to know if your definition is correct when you read OED? My use of it really isn't all that clear from the OED, though I suppose definition #1 from Verb 2 would have covered how I had used the word. I had been talking about how a company that fired someone was trying to niggle the ex-employee out of her vacation pay. Was that used correctly, do you think? I surely thought so before I read the OED!

Wow! How could such a simple word that most of us would have assumed we knew the meaning of end up being such a tricky thing. I only knew the "persistent annoyance, discomfort" meaning, but if someone else knows one of the others my sentence could be wholly transformed. I could even get slapped. (Not for the first time) Many words have simmilar or shades of meaning but total contradiction must be quite rare. I would suggest that niggle is such a nice word to say that it must have "evolved" independently several times.

It is a very nice word to say, isn't it? I love the variation in definition - interesting! Thanks for bringing this definition up, Kalleh!

I used the word tonight when I was having dinner with my son. He said, "WHAT?" He thought I was using a racist word and wouldn't believe me when I told him it has nothing to do with "nigger."

Perhaps it isn't used much anymore for that reason.

I probably would only use it in the final OED definition, as in niggling pain.