Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An individual part or item; a particular.
- noun Particulars considered individually and in relation to a whole.
- noun A minor or an inconsequential item or aspect; a minutia.
- noun A minute or thorough treatment or account.
- noun A discrete part or portion of a work, such as a painting, building, or decorative object, especially when considered in isolation.
- noun A representation of such a part or portion.
- noun A small elaborated element of a work of art, craft, or design.
- noun Such elements considered together.
- noun The rendering of artistic detail.
- noun A group of military personnel assigned to a particular duty, usually a fatigue duty.
- noun The duty assigned.
- transitive verb To report or relate explicitly or in particulars.
- transitive verb To provide with artistic or decorative detail.
- transitive verb To assign to a particular duty.
- transitive verb To clean (a car interior, for example) meticulously.
- transitive verb To market to (a physician) the drugs sold by one's company,
- idiom (in detail) With attention to particulars; thoroughly or meticulously.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The service on which one is detailed.
- To divide or set off; specifically, to set apart for a particular service; appoint to a separate duty: chiefly in military use: as, to
detail a corporal's guard for fatigue duty or as an escort; to detail an officer. - To relate, report, or narrate in particulars; recite the particulars of; particularize; tell fully and distinctly: as, to
detail all the facts in due order. - To give details or particulars about something.
- noun An individual part; an item; a particular: as, the account is accurate in all its details; the point objected to is an unimportant detail; collectively (without a plural), particulars; particulars considered separately and in relation to the whole: as, a matter of detail.
- noun In the fine arts, etc., a relatively small, subordinate, and particular part, as distinguished from a general conception or from larger parts or effects; also, such parts collectively (in the singular).
- noun A minute account; a narrative or report of particulars: as, he gave a detail of all the transaction.
- noun Milit., the selection of an individual or a body of troops for a particular service; the person or persons so selected; a detachment.
- noun Individually; part by part.
- noun Synonyms Relation, recital.
- noun Squad.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To relate in particulars; to particularize; to report minutely and distinctly; to enumerate; to specify.
- transitive verb (Mil.) To tell off or appoint for a particular service, as an officer, a troop, or a squadron.
- transitive verb To provide with fine or intricate added decoration.
- noun A minute portion; one of the small parts; a particular; an item; -- used chiefly in the plural.
- noun A narrative which relates minute points; an account which dwells on particulars.
- noun (Mil.) The selection for a particular service of a person or a body of men; hence, the person or the body of men so selected.
- noun A minor part, as, in a building, the cornice, caps of the buttresses, capitals of the columns, etc., or (called
larger details ) a porch, a gable with its windows, a pavilion, or an attached tower. - noun A detail drawing.
- noun a drawing of the full size, or on a large scale, of some part of a building, machine, etc.
- noun in subdivisions; part by part; item by item; circumstantially; with particularity.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun countable Something small enough to escape casual notice.
- noun uncountable A profusion of details.
- noun Something considered trivial enough to ignore.
- noun countable A person's name, address and other personal information.
- noun military A temporary unit or assignment.
- verb transitive to explain in detail
- verb transitive (US (?)) to clean carefully (particularly a car)
- verb transitive (
military ) to assign to a particular task
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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As I think Marion Zimmer Bradley once said (and she should have known, having written pornography under pseudonyms), “Describing sex in detail is like describing plumbing.”
"New" as the Enemy of Excellence « L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website 2010
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Twitter has a lot of virtues, but discussing policy issues in detail is not one of them.
Matthew Yglesias » Marginal Cost Pricing for Mass Transit 2010
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The field of evolutionary developmental biology, which studies the genetics of morphology in detail is now a rapidly expanding one, with many of the developmental genetic cascades, particularly in the fruitfly (Drosophila), now catalogued in considerable detail.
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Exactly how to best do that in detail is what they want more information about, but just knowing that much was quite helpful in terms of focusing their efforts.
Matthew Yglesias » Is Education Spending Going Up Or Down? 2010
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As I think Marion Zimmer Bradley once said (and she should have known, having written pornography under pseudonyms), “Describing sex in detail is like describing plumbing.”
February « 2010 « L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website 2010
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But I think the overwhelming demand for evidence in detail is really creating a burden for forces.
The Smooth And Efficient Running Of A Police Station « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2010
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On the other hand, we had the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bild, Süddeutsche Zeitung as well as the Austrian Der Standard and the Neue Zürisches Zeitung covering the story in detail from a very different angle.
Who is to run our foreign policy? Helen 2006
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What I did take issue with, and I do not see that you specifically answered it in detail, is that God does NOT work temporally as well.
Courting the Theists 2005
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But since most of the MPs I've met lead lives that differ only in detail from the pattern I've just described, I suspect they may know something that we don't.
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Another sterol which Windaus has studied in detail, is ergosterol, which occurs partly in ergot and partly in yeast.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1927 and 1928 - Presentation Speech 1966
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