fastidious
/faˈstɪdɪəs
/adjective
1Very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail: she dressed with fastidious care...
- In its overall design and fastidious attention to detail, the table reflects the concept of presenting a useful, industrially produced object that is a work of art.
- He plays it deadpan, with impeccable style and fastidious attention to detail, but of course that only enhances the absurdity.
- Aside from this fastidious attention to detail, the designer's work has few distinguishing features.
Synonyms
scrupulous, punctilious, painstaking, meticulous, assiduous, sedulous, perfectionist, fussy, finicky, dainty, over-particular;
critical, overcritical, hypercritical, hard/difficult/impossible to please;
pedantic, precise, exact, hair-splitting, exacting, demanding;
Scottish & Irish pass-remarkable
informal pernickety, nitpicking, choosy, picky
North American informal persnickety
archaic nice, overnice
1.1Very concerned about matters of cleanliness: the child seemed fastidious about getting her fingers dirty...
- It does not matter how fastidious one is, how thoroughly and often one washes one's hands or even how many vitamins one takes, one is still likely to get sick from long-haul air travel.
- He always loves to have everything very chic and polished and fastidious.
- When I started cleaning carpets, I realized early that my standards of cleaning weren't up to the level of some of the highly fastidious clients I was attracting.
Derivatives
fastidiously
/ adverb ...- I collected Eisners and studied them fastidiously.
- I hope you are all playing as fastidiously as this.
- There are few patrons for the fastidiously classical performer.
fastidiousness
/ noun ...- The 33-year old man works with delicacy and fastidiousness, saying that each job entails a precise and constant application.
- It was really about his excessive fastidiousness.
- She is a high-strung kind of girl, but at least her fastidiousness extends to her sense of obligation and hospitality.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin fastidiosus, from fastidium 'loathing'. The word originally meant 'disagreeable', later 'disgusted'. Current senses date from the 17th century.
This comes from Latin fastidiosus, from fastidium ‘loathing’. The word originally meant ‘disagreeable, distasteful’, later ‘disgusted’. Current senses (‘attentive to accuracy’, ‘concerned about personal cleanliness’) date from the 17th century.