punctilious

English

WOTD – 20 July 2012

Etymology

From punctilio (“fine point in exactness of conduct”) +‎ -ous.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /pʌŋkˈtɪli.əs/

Adjective

punctilious (comparative more punctilious, superlative most punctilious)

  1. Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.
    With a punctilious slap of the gloves, the duel was now inevitable.
  2. Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.
    Synonyms: finicky, nitpicky, precise
    • 2009, Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson and 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.

Synonyms

  • See also Thesaurus:meticulous

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Further reading

  • punctilious in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
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