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Added 28 September 2026

meticulous

/məˈtɪk.jə.ləs/ adjective

Latin root: meticulōsus Wiktionary

adjective Definition written for WordofTheDay.US. More about meticulous at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

Showing great attention to detail; very careful and precise.
The watchmaker was meticulous about every gear in the mechanism.

Origin

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.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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