finicky
Americanadjective
adjective
-
excessively particular, as in tastes or standards; fussy
-
full of trivial detail; overelaborate
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of finicky
Explanation
You reject any vegetable that isn't yellow. You like basmati rice, but detest jasmine, Arborio, and brown. You dine at one restaurant, and you always order the same meal. You are a finicky eater — that is, you are quite particular about food. Fastidious, fussy, picky, persnickety: these are all synonyms for finicky, and they all suggest someone with extremely exacting tastes and habits, someone almost impossible to please. Finicky can also be used to describe something that demands a great deal of care and attention to detail — a finicky lock might require that you jiggle the key just so. Finicky generally conveys the sense that the person or thing it describes is quirky and pointlessly precise.
Vocabulary lists containing finicky
"A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "F"
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Black Boy
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Finicky maybe, and that could be attributed to trust issues, but bougie?
From Salon • Mar. 10, 2023
Finicky parents can pack special cooked or canned meals for their beloved beasts.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 30, 2015
Finicky types, with their hypersensitive taste buds, tend to belong to the first group.
From Time • Feb. 17, 2015
Finicky colleges like Harvard and Yale haughtily kept NYA out because its pay was skimpy.
From Time Magazine Archive
Smaug, the Irrepressibly Finicky, was our industrial-strength water boiler.
From "Darius the Great Is Not Okay" by Adib Khorram
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
