Meticulous
//mɪˈtɪkjɪlɪs// adj
adj ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
Adjective
- 1 Characterized by very precise, conscientious attention to details.
"meticulous search"
- 2 Timid, fearful, overly cautious. archaic
Adjective
- 1 marked by extreme care in treatment of details wordnet
- 2 marked by precise accordance with details wordnet
Example
More examples"It is not necessary to be meticulous."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin meticulōsus (“full of fear, timid, fearful, terrible, frightful”), from metus (“fear”) and -culōsus, extracted from perīculōsus (“perilous”). Sense of “characterized by very precise, conscientious attention to details” is a semantic loan from French méticuleux.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.