Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Overparticular about trivial details; fastidious.
- adj. Snobbish; pretentious.
- adj. Requiring strict attention to detail; demanding: a persnickety job.
Wiktionary
- adj. US Fastidious or fussy.
- adj. Obsessive about mundane details, demanding for precision.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. colloq. Finicky or fussy; demanding attention to petty details; -- of people.
- adj. colloq. snobbish; behaving aloofly.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details
- adj. (used colloquially) overly conceited or arrogant
Etymologies
- Alteration of pernickety (Wiktionary)
- Alteration of pernickety. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“You are the first person to use the word persnickety that I have ever encountered – Way To GO! good word”
“To be polite, I'd call her persnickety," he told me.”
“Sales are too complicated in Manhattan because there are many other factors involved in a sale, such as persnickety co-op boards or new development condos that prefer cash buyers at first.”
“I offer some 'persnickety' counsel; Sarah, thou must discover olde America's Christian Talibanists in more than books.”
“Ms. Jones says "persnickety" details in recipes, such as asking for a specific size onion, mandating "fussy" ways of cutting vegetables and listing expensive or hard-to-find ingredients, are frustrating home cooks.”
“Voltaire's novel ends with our hero more or less happily settled down with his love interest, who becomes, unfortunately, kind of persnickety and not much to look at as the years go by, but a talented pastry chef nonetheless.”
“There are no words to describe the feeling of becoming a new father for the first time, so I will just use the word "persnickety".”
“He's sort of -- he's kind of persnickety and fussy and, you know, overly”
“I’ll call the persnickety old terror and beg him to be nice.”
“Suddenly, good architecture and how it gets made was everywhere in the spotlight, with the design for Ground Zero making front-page news, architects discussing plans on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," and even their persnickety attire closely observed in the style pages of fashion magazines.”
The Wall Street Journal: The Skyscraper as a Pillar of Confidence
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘persnickety’.
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Muse's tacet ,to learn
Music brings silence's to raging thoughts and temperament , calm, as it is our object of definite purpose.
tacet, cadence, tempo, treble clef, penultimate, lexicon, origin, orchestra, kantele, magus, eros, coalesce and 248 more...
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Sue's favorite words
panache, flair, pantaloons, periwinkle, pumpernickel, persnickety, cachet, coquette, élan, iris, ambrosia, keen and 99 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Words For Novel (Part 2)
fable, sprite, syphilitic, anvil, wonderstruck, vertigo, bridled, tufted, fettered, savvy, tweed fedora, tryst and 255 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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The 123 List
words listed more than 123 times
ethereal, ephemeral, persnickety, akimbo, zeitgeist, chiaroscuro, sesquipedalian, wanderlust, schadenfreude, alacrity, anathema, laconic and 14 more...
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Primero
random
persnickety, hypoxia, peripatetic, love, anoxia, ginko, inigma, gentle, nourished, deem, earthquake, feather and 20 more...
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palimpsest
an overlapping of manuscripts.
eschatology, ostentatiously, harangue, caricature, caveat, chiaroscuro, Emollient, Diaphanous, Demesne, cataclysm, milieu, puerile and 23 more...
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Favs
'nuf said
guffaw, pontificate, regalia, appease, sage, epitome, posit, dissipate, delineate, congruent, erroneous, braggadocio and 20 more...
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Old words
recalcitrant, grok, Hiatus, shanghai, pervade, diffuse, tempestuous, incorrigible, daunt, cull, Erudite, Assuage and 35 more...
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Garbiage
word trash
parapluie, brobdingnagian, plié, segue, laconic, pastoral, phthisis, belly, synecdoche, apotheosis, sepulchral, mollification and 40 more...
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rare words that might be useful
transmogrify, fastidiousness, interiority, indecorous, procrustean, vociferous, descry, solecism, apogee, progeny, envisage, anteroom and 3 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
Words
teeter, headlong, reprobate, canard, ersatz, prevaricate, trenchant, minatory, fatuous, stultify, vitiate, fulminate and 135 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
grabbable, retuiteando, leaving, fantastic, absolutely, kurwa, hella, ridic, underpass, hate, interlude, plush and 2369 more... -
P is for Porch Dog
My P Words
paddington, paddy wagon, paddy whack, paddywhack, paisano, pandemonium, pantaloon, pantaloons, paper tiger, papoose, parachute pants, parcel and 109 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for persnickety.
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