as in careful
hard to please
an Oxford don who's definitely a pernickety old chap
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Recent Examples of pernickety
Perhaps this pernickety attention to detail is just the next logical step after years of falsification?
—
Raven Smith, Vogue, 9 Dec. 2020
Raven Smith, Vogue, 9 Dec. 2020
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pernickety
Adjective
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Both coaches and players have been respectful of the other team all week, careful not to produce any bulletin board material.—
Tom Murphy,
Arkansas Online,
5 Sep. 2025
-
Ben Lewis Doherty, playing a boy named Sam whose life is upended by Robbie, is the show’s greatest innocent, a softhearted moppet who warns deer to be careful when crossing the street.—
Roxana Hadadi,
Vulture,
5 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
The same goes for why Kia didn’t replace the finicky and annoying setup with physical buttons, as its corporate sibling Hyundai did on the Ioniq 5 compact SUV earlier this year.—
Mark Phelan,
USA Today,
31 Aug. 2025
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The kitchen needs to turn out three meals a day that are creative enough to draw in finicky locals, anodyne enough to satisfy an international clientele, and sturdy enough to survive the room-service gauntlet.—
Helen Rosner,
New Yorker,
31 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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But Wilson is in his comfort zone as ever with Anderson, playing Francis’s persnickety dedication to the trip’s itinerary with his typical generosity.—
Joe Reid,
Vulture,
12 June 2025
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What would the notoriously persnickety Corbitt say about those bold additions?—
Libby Monteith Minor,
Southern Living,
17 May 2025
Adjective
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In particular, the bacon bits were chilled and all stuck together in one big, congealed lump along the inside of the bowl.—
Bud Kennedy,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
9 Sep. 2025
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Technology firms — and artificial intelligence companies such as Broadcom and Nvidia, in particular — led the rise.—
Yeo Boon Ping,
CNBC,
9 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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This might seem fussy, but no one likes watery pimiento cheese.—
Lisa Cericola,
Southern Living,
6 Sep. 2025
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Boxing makes for a hell of a cinematic watch, quick and easy to follow, winners obvious, losers clear, plenty of blood to spill, and Michôd doesn’t get fussy with his fight scenes.—
Kate Erbland,
IndieWire,
5 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
My youngest son's the pickiest.—
Erin Clements,
People.com,
3 Sep. 2025
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Venus will have entered Virgo on September 19th, just days before, and while Mercury thrives in Virgo’s precision, Venus feels nit picky here.—
Dossé-Via Trenou,
Refinery29,
29 Aug. 2025
Adjective
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Competition arrived in May, when the Rosewood Amsterdam opened its doors in the former Palace of Justice after a fastidious 10-year renovation that reportedly cost hundreds of millions of dollars.—
Julie Belcove,
Robb Report,
27 July 2025
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This is true of people who don’t bathe and also people who are fastidious about bathing and douse themselves in cologne, and everyone else in between.—
R. Eric Thomas,
Chicago Tribune,
29 June 2025
Adjective
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The significant weight loss and the dramatic nature of the role suggest a deep commitment to his acting career, which makes a return to the physically demanding world of professional wrestling seem unlikely in the near future.—
Andrew Ravens,
MSNBC Newsweek,
1 Sep. 2025
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Wheaton has opened up about how he was bullied into his acting career by his overly demanding mother and physically aggressive father.—
Sezin Devi Koehler September 1,
EW.com,
1 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Pernickety.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pernickety. Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.
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