hypercautious

adjective

hy·​per·​cau·​tious ˌhī-pər-ˈkȯ-shəs 

variants or hyper-cautious

: extremely or excessively cautious

With all the polls closed and most of the results in, it's down to Florida. … Having been burned once by prematurely calling the state, the networks are now hypercautious.

—Michelle Cottle

In theory, at least, a hypercautious individual should be able to avoid almost all illness by not doing certain things.

—George M. Foster

Examples of hypercautious in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Banks need to be hypercautious about their lending activities amid this hostile environment. —Jack Kelly, Forbes, 5 May 2023

For one, pairing Todd Bowles – a coach who is hypercautious with his offensive approach given his intolerance to turnovers – with a player who threw 23 interceptions in the last two years is a recipe for disaster. —Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz, USA TODAY, 28 Apr. 2023

From the aviation perspective, the wireless industry simply couldn’t fathom its hypercautious safety culture, which, given the horrific consequences of an accident, demands that any critical equipment be proven to pose a probability of failure of no more than one in a billion. —Peter Elkind, ProPublica, 26 May 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1811, in the meaning defined above