technicality

Noun

1. The quality or state of being technical.
   • At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy ; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality into...
   • Ha and Hyland suggest that technicality is not binary and it is not always possible to say that a word is technical or not. - 2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Position vectors, homologous chromosomes and gamma...

   Synonyms: technicalness

2. That which is technical, or peculiar to any trade, profession, sect, or the like.
   • the technicalities of the sect
   • [T]he names of places and horses and slangy technicalities of the turf, had interlarded the poor girl's brain-sick babble; […] - 1862 January – 1863 January, M[ary] E[lizabeth] Braddon, “Fighting the Battle”, in Aurora...
3. A minor detail, rule, law, etc., seemingly insignificant to a non-specialist but which has significant consequences in larger matters.
   • legal technicality
   • These are some of the "Reversible Errors" on which a new trial can be had and are often spoken of by misinformed business men as "technicalities," as when they say a certain gangster "got off on a technicality" or "got...
   • Mommsen believed that Claudius had been an augur who was ordered by a chief pontiff Metellus to inaugurate Sulpicius son of Servius as a priest, that Claudius declined on grounds of a religious technicality, that...