Do you use "pick nits"? [closed]

Recently I have been watching What's my car worth?

One person said several times, "I like to pick nits.", as in being a nitpicker.

Do you use or have ever heard "pick nits"? It is used?

Solution 1:

Nitpick, nit-pick, and pick nits are all attested (Thesaurus.com). Literally it is the removal of the eggs of lice from the hair. Because the eggs are very small, this is a painstaking procedure.

Apparently the noun form nit-picker recently came to mean a person who attacks trivialities, and after that the verb form got its figurative sense (World Wide Words).

Solution 2:

I think to the extent that Brits say it at all, it’s just a facetious reversal of metaphoric nitpick (occasionally hyphenated), which is really the only “standard” British version.

To me as a Brit, it’s a bit like saying, for example, “my flabber has never been so ghasted”.

But it seems quite a few Americans (although still a minority) say it. I guess it’s unlikely they’re all doing it facetiously.