minutiae

in a sentence

Exquisite minutiae beyond any guidebook or knowledge of the esteemed ecology group.  (source) Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, 2018

For all his persnickety command of the hotel's minutiae, the Bishop had obviously never been in the basement.  (source) Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, 2016

I realized he would not be interested in the personal minutiae of Will's life, even if he knew.  (source) Jojo Moyes, Me Before You, 2012

Two weeks later, the Colonel returned from spring break with two notebooks filled with the minutiae of prank planning, sketches of various locations, and a forty-page, two-column list of problems that might crop up and their solutions.  (source) John Green, Looking for Alaska, 2005

He had always urged his students to understand the overall tones and motifs of an artistic period rather than getting lost in the minutia of dates and specific works.†  (source) Dan Brown, Angels & Demons, 2000

Having thus far dealt primarily with the "minutiae" of a plan for confederation, the delegates, by late July, had gotten down to the "great points of representation, boundaries, and taxation," in Jefferson's words; and as Josiah Bartlett wrote with New Hampshire understatement, "the sentiments of the members [were] very different on many of the articles."  (source) David McCullough, John Adams, 2002

Why, Mrs. Gant!' he said—" She was off on a lengthy divagation, recording with an absorbed gusto the interminable minutia of her transaction with the worthy Quinine King, with the attendant phenomena, during the time, of birds, bees, flowers, sun, clouds, dogs, cows, and people.†  (source) Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, 1929

To awaken in this manner after years of war was too much to bear, and to prevent himself from breaking under the strain he tried to take simple inventories: he spoke to himself about what he had done that day, and took note of the minutiae of the bathroom in which he lay in a steaming tub of hot water all the way up to his blessed collar-bone.  (source) Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War, 1991

He therefore presents to the mind of his auditors a succession of great general truths (which he himself only comprehends, and expresses, confusedly), and of petty minutia, which he is but too able to discover and to point out.†  (source) Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy In America, Volume 2, 1840

Fredi would drone on about minutiae until he saw eyes drooping.  (source) Joshua Davis, Spare Parts, 2014

[6] America began to stand for something quite new in the world—in government, in law, in public and private morals, in customs and habits of mind, in the minutia of social intercourse†  (source) Henry L. Mencken, The American Language, 1919

I forget sometimes that the entire world isn't up on the minutiae of classical music.†  (source) Gayle Forman, Where She Went, 2011

14 Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth, In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb'd winds and the storms,) Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women, The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd, And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, And the streets how their throb†  (source) Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855