pains·tak·ing
ˈpān-ˌstā-kiŋ 
: taking pains : expending, showing, or involving diligent care and effort
painstaking research
painstaking tasks
painstaking accuracy
: the action of taking pains : diligent care and effort
… greater painstaking to achieve incidental verisimilitude and accuracy of detail …—
Times Literary Supplement
Times Literary SupplementExamples of painstaking in a Sentence
Adjective
The book describes the election process in painstaking detail.
she was always painstaking about her work
Recent Examples on the Web
Mark Osborne, CBS News, 8 May 2026
But identifying an entire shipping route that is safe from mines is a painstaking process that takes time.
—Lauren Kent, CNN Money, 8 May 2026
Making sense of that mess to draw distinct lines from biodiversity to human nutrition takes painstaking work — tracing people's diet to individual crops and then, the pollinators that support them.
—Jonathan Lambert, NPR, 6 May 2026
For decades, a small program in the Environmental Protection Agency conducted the painstaking scientific work of assessing the toxicity of chemicals.
—Sharon Lerner, ProPublica, 1 May 2026
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Adjective
The United States government is sending a repatriation plane for the painstaking process of safely evacuating 17 Americans from the cruise ship dealing with a deadly hantavirus outbreak.
—Mark Osborne, CBS News, 8 May 2026
But identifying an entire shipping route that is safe from mines is a painstaking process that takes time.
—Lauren Kent, CNN Money, 8 May 2026
Making sense of that mess to draw distinct lines from biodiversity to human nutrition takes painstaking work — tracing people's diet to individual crops and then, the pollinators that support them.
—Jonathan Lambert, NPR, 6 May 2026
For decades, a small program in the Environmental Protection Agency conducted the painstaking scientific work of assessing the toxicity of chemicals.
—Sharon Lerner, ProPublica, 1 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for painstaking
Cite this Entry
“Painstaking.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/painstaking. Accessed 19 May. 2026.
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