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  1. persnickety love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Overparticular about trivial details; fastidious.
  2. adj. Snobbish; pretentious.
  3. adj. Requiring strict attention to detail; demanding: a persnickety job.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. US Fastidious or fussy.
  2. adj. Obsessive about mundane details, demanding for precision.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. colloq. Finicky or fussy; demanding attention to petty details; -- of people.
  2. adj. colloq. snobbish; behaving aloofly.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details
  2. adj. (used colloquially) overly conceited or arrogant

Etymologies

  1. Alteration of pernickety (Wiktionary)
  2. Alteration of pernickety. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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Lists

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Comments

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  • chained_bear "For a persnickety bureaucrat such as Flood, not getting the answers he demanded aggravated him greatly..."
    —Brian Hicks, Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew (NY: Ballantine Books, 2004), 107

    I've known this word since childhood, and have never seen pernickety (that I can recall), so I thought I'd add this usage and see if we can get a good umbrage-fight started. Sep 18, 2009

  • lea Yes. I can see myself in the future - and I still can remember this word vividly - because perse means ass|buttocks in Finnish. So, s-version it is, for me. Mar 1, 2009

  • skipvia One of those non-onomatopoeias that sounds exactly like what it means. Oct 14, 2007

  • oroboros See pernickety. Aug 16, 2007

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‘persnickety’ has been looked up 4444 times, loved by 46 people, added to 253 lists, commented on 4 times, and has a Scrabble score of 22.