punctilious
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From punctilio (“fine point in exactness of conduct”) + -ous.
Pronunciation[edit]
Adjective[edit]
punctilious (comparative more punctilious, superlative most punctilious)
- Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:meticulous
- With a punctilious slap of the gloves, the duel was now inevitable.
- Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.
- Synonyms: finicky, nitpicky, precise; see also Thesaurus:meticulous
- 2009, Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Semantics: an introduction to meaning in language:
- Of course, humans do not treat time in such a punctilious fashion.
- 2017, Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Pantheon Books, page 103:
- Every editor at Merriam-Webster deals with the Black Books at many points during their tenure. The Black Books are the in-house set of rules for writing a dictionary (commonly called a style guide) as conceived and written in punctilious detail by the former editor in chief Philip Babcock Gove, for the creation of Webster’s Third.
Derived terms[edit]
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
strictly attentive to detail
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precise
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Further reading[edit]
- “punctilious”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.