punctilious
Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.
Adjective
- Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.
- With a punctilious slap of the gloves, the duel was now inevitable.
- He was punctilious. According to those who worked with him, even his paperwork was the best they'd seen. - 2001 May 12, Robert Potts, “The poet at play”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
Synonyms: accurate careful comprehensive solicitous conscientious exhaustive fastidious groundly in-depth intensive letter-perfect mindful minute particular polished precise painstaking punctilious rigorous root and branch scrupulous scrutinous sedulous strict
- Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.
- Of course, humans do not treat time in such a punctilious fashion. - 2009, Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Semantics: an introduction to meaning in language:
- 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...
Synonyms: finicky nitpicky precise accurate careful comprehensive solicitous conscientious exhaustive fastidious groundly in-depth intensive letter-perfect mindful minute particular polished painstaking punctilious rigorous root and branch scrupulous scrutinous
Origin
Etymology tree English punctilio Proto-Indo-European *h₃ed- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *h₃édosder.? Proto-Italic *-ōtsos or *-otsos Latin -ōsus Old French -usbor. Middle English -ous English -ous English punctilious From punctilio (“fine point in exactness of conduct”) + -ous.