detail
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈdiːteɪl/
ipa: /ˈditeɪl/
ipa: /dɪˈteɪl/
ipa: /dɪˈteɪl/
ipa: /dɪˈteɪl/
rhymes: -iːteɪl
rhymes: -eɪl
Forms: form: details
Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French détail, from Old French detail, from detaillier, from de- + taillier (“to cut”).
Senses: examples: text: Note this fine detail in the lower left corner.
text: We missed several important details in the contract.
text: attention to detail
synonyms: minutia
technicality
trifle
triviality
glosses: A part small enough to escape casual notice.
examples: text: This etching is full of fine detail.
text: Hidden behind thickets of acronyms and gorse bushes of detail, a new great game is under way across the globe. Some call it geoeconomics, but it's geopolitics too. The current power play consists of an extraordinary range of countries simultaneously sitting down to negotiate big free trade and investment agreements.
ref: 2013 July 19, Timothy Garton Ash, “Where Dr Pangloss meets Machiavelli”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 18:
glosses: A profusion of details.
examples: text: Attention to detail was said to be one of the secrets of Gerrard's success as a player.
ref: 2018 May 4, Tom English, “Steven Gerrard: A 'seriously clever or recklessly stupid' Rangers appointment”, in BBC Sport:
glosses: The small parts that can escape casual notice.
examples: text: I don't concern myself with the details of accounting.
text: Safety at work is not a mere detail.
glosses: A part considered trivial enough to ignore.
examples: text: The arresting officer asked the suspect for his details.
glosses: A person's name, address and other personal information.
examples: text: Frequently members of the small police detail dispatched to the scene joined in.
ref: 2022, Gary Gerstle, chapter 7, in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order […] , New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, Part II. The Neoliberal Order, 1970–2020:
topics: government
law-enforcement
military
politics
war
synonyms: contingent
detachment
glosses: A temporary unit or assignment.
examples: text: WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, but could not prove, and would cite as they took to the streets. They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies.
ref: 2013 June 7, Gary Younge, “Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 18:
glosses: An individual feature, fact, or other item, considered separately from the whole of which it is a part.
examples: text: "I could never persuade myself to confide in him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply."
ref: 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter 6, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:
glosses: A narrative which relates minute points; an account which dwells on particulars.
examples: text: On the cover of Julia Kristeva's Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia is a detail from a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, “Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Elizabeth Binzenstock, and Her Two Children, Philip and Catherine.”
ref: 1992, Janice L. Doane, Devon L. Hodges, From Klein to Kristeva, page 53:
text: Shrubbery and the hand of Christ (detail of plate 12)
ref: 2001, Maryan Wynn Ainsworth, Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads, page 110:
text: Eight years later, the outstanding exponent of Memory Painting was herself publicly commemorated by a six-cent postage stamp showing a detail from one of her most patriotic works, July Fourth (1951).
ref: 2001, Charles Russell, Self-taught Art: The Culture and Aesthetics of American Vernacular Art, page 100:
synonyms: portion
section
qualifier: paintings
glosses: A selected portion of a painting.
Derived terms: detailee
detailer
detailist
detailless
detailly
detailman
detail-oriented
God is in the detail
go into detail
in detail
into detail
microdetail
security detail
superdetail
the devil is in the details
Related terms: deets
overview
bird's-eye view
big picture