finicky
Fastidious and fussy; difficult to please; exacting, especially about details.
Adjective
- Fastidious and fussy; difficult to please; exacting, especially about details.
- My editor is very finicky about punctuation. Every dot and comma has to be just right.
- She has a finicky baby that's hard to feed.
Synonyms: fastidious fussy anal-retentive choosy conscientious dainty exacting finical finicking finickity finicky finikin hypercritical lily-handed meticulous niggly nitpickish nit-picky nitty overcritical overscrupulous particular pedantic pernickety
- Demanding; requiring above-normal care.
- The lawnmower is a bit finicky in cold weather.
- Instead of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cream Cheese Pie Crust from her addictingly finicky The Pie and Pastry Bible, I decided to make her Sour Cream Crust. - 2009 July 13, Evan Kleiman, “Pie-a-Day #20 & #21: Cherry Pie and...
Origin
From finick (“to work in a fastidious manner, wasting time over unnecessary details”) + -y. Compare finicking, finical, and dated finikin. Perhaps suggested by obsolete Dutch fijnkens (“accurately, neatly, prettily”) (modern Dutch fijntjes). Compare also Sicilian finicchiu.