Etimology
Borrowed from Middle French détail, from Old French detail, from detaillier, from de- + taillier (“to cut”).
noun
detail (countable and uncountable, plural details)
(countable) A part small enough to escape casual notice.
(uncountable) A profusion of details.
(uncountable) The small parts that can escape casual notice.
A part considered trivial enough to ignore.
(countable) A person's name, address and other personal information.
(military, law enforcement) A temporary unit or assignment.
An individual feature, fact, or other item, considered separately from the whole of which it is a part.
A narrative which relates minute points; an account which dwells on particulars.
(paintings) A selected portion of a painting.
Examples
Synonyms: minutia, technicality, trifle, triviality
Note this fine detail in the lower left corner.
We missed several important details in the contract.
This etching is full of fine detail.
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.
Attention to detail was said to be one of the secrets of Gerrard's success as a player.
I don't concern myself with the details of accounting.
The arresting officer asked the suspect for his details.
Synonyms: contingent, detachment
Frequently members of the small police detail dispatched to the scene joined in.
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.
"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."
Synonyms: portion, section
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.”
Shrubbery and the hand of Christ
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 .
verb
detail (third-person singular simple present details, present participle detailing, simple past and past participle detailed)
(transitive) To explain in detail.
(transitive) To clean carefully (particularly of road vehicles) (always pronounced. /ˈdiːteɪl/)
(transitive, military, law enforcement) To assign to a particular task.
Examples
Synonym: specify
I'll detail the exact procedure to you later.
It is a sunny morning in Amman and the three uniformed judges in Jordan’s state security court are briskly working their way through a pile of slim grey folders on the bench before them. Each details the charges against 25 or so defendants accused of supporting the fighters of the Islamic State , now rampaging across Syria and Iraq under their sinister black banners and sending nervous jitters across the Arab world.
We need to have the minivan detailed.
Synonyms: detach, second
Two years after England’s World Cup victory, Stiles was at Wembley again to help Manchester United become the first English team to win the European Cup final. Again Eusébio was one of his opponents, playing for Benfica, and again Stiles was detailed to keep him quiet. […]