Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Like Felix Unger -- punctilious

from www.wordsmith.org

punctilious (pungk-TIL-ee-uhs) adjective


Extremely attentive to minute details of action or behavior.


[From Italian punctiglio, from Spanish puntillo, diminutive of punto (point), from Latin punctum (point).]





See punctilious in the Visual Thesaurus.





"However earnest his aims and punctilious his language, Fowler had not found his genius in schoolteaching, and he did not find it in his essays."


-- I. Shenker; For the King's English, Fighting the Good Fight; Smithsonian (Washington DC); Nov 1990.

No comments: