Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Persnickety.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of persons,precise in trifles; fastidious; fussily particular, especially in dress or about trifles.
- Of things, requiring minute attention or painstaking labor; characterized by petty details.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. colloq. Finical or fussy; full of petty details.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details
Etymologies
- Unknown (Wiktionary)
- Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Personally, I could care less about persnickety or "pernickety" if you're Scottish, fruitless articles that discuss TV ratings or predictable comparisons to tired shows.”
“She poked fun at Wimbledon in her Twitter account by questioning the 'pernickety' attitude supposedly introduced this year.”
Gaea Times (by Simple Thoughts) Breaking News and incisive views 24/7
“And they adjust alarmingly quickly to life improvements: one minute, you're happy to have made it from youth hostel to hotel; the next, you're getting pernickety about the thread count of the sheets.”
The Guardian: I'd be much happier if people stopped asking if I was happy | Rachel Cooke
“The ferocity and full-throatedness of Thom Southerland's pent-in, close-up, unfussy production, in which everyone is true and Alastair Brookshaw as the pernickety desolate victim is outstanding, means that the small Southwark Playhouse, which earlier this year had a runaway hit with the dynamic Tender Napalm, has now hosted one of the musical events of the year.”
The Guardian: Decade; The Tempest; The Kitchen; Parade – review
“This is general Euro-pernickety policy, people, not HumanRights Fail, although perish the thought that I should stand in the way of a good lynching.”
“Also, I think gamers can be a rather stubborn, pernickety bunch, but if a game is good then I believe it will find a place within the heart of even the most ardent traditionalist.”
“I've been lazily chucking in ordinary butter up until now, but I give the clarified stuff a try, and even strain it in, in obedience to Michel Roux Jr's particularly pernickety method.”
“But the United States Golf Association is pernickety about these things, so here are the bare facts.”
The Guardian: Rory McIlroy hits heights and leads by six in US Open at Congressional
“I think you'd have to be really pernickety to value any of the tweaks this program offers. just_laze”
Xdn Tweaker Updates To Tweak Windows 7 | Lifehacker Australia
“Schorr could be stubborn and pernickety, but he cherished a fierce integrity.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pernickety’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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English words of Scots origin
If it's not ...
blackmail, blatant, caddie, caddy, clan, convene, cosy, firth, glamour, gloaming, golf, glengarry and 15 more...
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pedantic words
Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,..Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide Late schooleboyes.
pedagogic, schoolmasterly, academic, bookish, donnish, dry as dust, dryasdust, pedantic, erudite, formal, inkhorn, learned and 65 more...
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ChortleGiggleSnort
Significant Words- Guiding you on your path to Snazzibility
flimsy, feeble, ranting, ramble, narky, snazzy, yoghurt, bulbous, pustule, globulous, geranium, megalomaniac and 521 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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tree's Words
aphasia, anhedonia, promontory, misandry, amanuensis, asymptote, penultimate, muslin, tundra, calico, kinaesthesia, rutabaga and 209 more...
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A spoonful of sugar
Words I should learn/I want to learn/I just learned, with a quotation to help the medicine go down.
approbation, assuage, chicanery, abscond, effrontery, enervation, equivocate, ennui, aftertaste, filibuster, perfunctory, abide and 391 more...
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adjectives
sartorial, saucy, wieldy, wuthering, dilapidated, rough-and-ready, flabbergasted, ravishing, seminal, snooty, galore, scrumptious and 386 more...
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kevinofnine's Words
sesquipedalian, pentasyllabic, sobriquet, epistemic, ameliorate, quibble, autological, magniloquent, circumlocutious, quintillion, bookish, tantamount and 139 more...
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the favourites
These are words that I like; either because they sound amazing, mean pretty things, seem particularly suited to their assigned definition, or just have good mouthfeel. The best ones embody some com...
tatterdemalion, alpenglow, dapple, defenestrate, wacky, lissom, lithe, whisper, madcap, magniloquent, whimsy, sallow and 208 more...
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miscellany
preposterous, minimalism, outnumbered, subroutine, malinger, oddity, eccentricity, laughable, oxymoronic, interstellar, winter, heedless and 335 more...
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Splendid Words.
Words that i find splendid and that give me joy to use with frequency.
clerihew, fraudulent, betwixt, correlative, irregular, inchoate, dichotomy, meretricious, antidisestablishm..., hippopotomonstros..., plosive, capitulate and 13 more...
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MyVocab
Words that have come in the previous papers
seriatim, hermitage, hermit, clemency, ingenuity, labyrinth, esoteric, chagrin, mortification, genuflect, stentorian, euphonious and 58 more...
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foreign
sang froid, schadenfreude, pernickety, non sequitur, zugzwang
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pernickety.
oroboros Add an "S" and you've only circumnavigated back to the same place! See persnickety. Aug 16, 2007