punctilious

Etymology

From punctilio (“fine point in exactness of conduct”) + -ous.

adj

  1. Strictly attentive to detail; meticulous or fastidious, particularly to codes or conventions.
    With a punctilious slap of the gloves, the duel was now inevitable.
  2. Precise or scrupulous; finicky or nitpicky.
    Of course, humans do not treat time in such a punctilious fashion. 2009, Ronnie Cann, Ruth Kempson, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Semantics: an introduction to meaning in language
    Every editor at Merriam-Webster deals with the Black Books at many points during their tenure. The Black Books are the in-house set of rules for writing a dictionary (commonly called a style guide) as conceived and written in punctilious detail by the former editor in chief Philip Babcock Gove, for the creation of Webster’s Third. 2017, Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Pantheon Books, page 103

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