detail

noun

1. (countable)A part small enough to escape casual notice.

   “Note this fine detail in the lower left corner.”

   “We missed several important details in the contract.”

   “attention to detail”

2. (uncountable)A profusion of details.

   “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.”

3. (uncountable)The small parts that can escape casual notice.

   “Attention to detail was said to be one of the secrets of Gerrard's success as a player.”

4. (countable, uncountable)A part considered trivial enough to ignore.

   “I don't concern myself with the details of accounting.”

   “Safety at work is not a mere detail.”

5. (countable)A person's name, address and other personal information.

   “The arresting officer asked the suspect for his details.”

6. (countable, uncountable)A temporary unit or assignment.

   “Frequently members of the small police detail dispatched to the scene joined in.”

7. (countable, uncountable)An individual feature, fact, or other item, considered separately from the whole of which it is a part.

   “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.”

8. (countable, uncountable)A narrative which relates minute points; an account which dwells on particulars.

   “"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."”

9. (countable, uncountable)A selected portion of a painting.

   “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 (detail of plate 12)”

   “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 (1951).”

verb

1. (transitive)To explain in detail.

   “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 (Isis), now rampaging across Syria and Iraq under their sinister black banners and sending nervous jitters across the Arab world.”

2. (transitive)To clean carefully (particularly of road vehicles, always pronounced /ˈdiːteɪl/)

   “We need to have the minivan detailed.”

3. (transitive)To assign to a particular task.

   “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. […]”