Pernickety
adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Fussy; paying undue attention to minor details; fastidious. Commonwealth, Ireland, UK
"‘You must forgive me,’ he said. ‘I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.’"
- 2 Requiring attention to minor details.
- 1 characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details wordnet
Example
More examples"According to pernickety moderators, non-sentences constitute a mortal danger to Tatoeba."
Etymology
From Scots pernickety, persnickety, apparently from per- + nick (“a notch, mark, cutting retort”) + -et (“-ed”) + -y; equivalent to English per- + nick + -ety; literally, “marked up”, then “overly precise”. The alternative form persnickety, with s, may be due to substitution of Scots sneck (“a cut, notch”) for nick. Compare also Scots variants pernicked, pernicket, pirnicky, and pernicky.
More for "pernickety"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.