fussiness
Americannoun
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the quality of being hard to please.
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the quality of being obsessed with or critical about petty details.
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the quality of being excessively ornate or elaborate.
Other Word Forms
Explanation
Fussiness is a quality of being overly careful or extremely hard to please. Your dad's fussiness might mean that his spices are organized alphabetically — and that he gets very annoyed if you put them back in the wrong order. If you like to have things just so before starting your homework — your room tidied, and two pencils on your desk lying parallel to your laptop — that's fussiness. You might also say you're fastidious or detail-oriented. Another kind of fussiness is essentially being picky about what you eat: "My brother's fussiness means we're always stuck eating pasta or pizza for dinner." And parents often describe the cries of an unhappy baby as fussiness, too: "Her fussiness is the worst at midnight."
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.
But get past the fussiness, and what you’ve got is a sauce that’s endlessly remixable: spicy, frothy, airy, even salad-dressing-adjacent.
From Salon ● Jun. 5, 2025
The study's lead author, Dr Zeynep Nas, said she hoped these findings would "help to alleviate parental blame", acknowledging that fussiness, while common, could be "a major source of anxiety for parents and caregivers".
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2024
Researchers found that 60% of infants whose parents had to switch formulas had experienced issues such as fussiness, gas, spit-up, constipation and diarrhea.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 7, 2024
He spent hours talking and sharing stories, and they tolerated his fussiness, looking for just the right angle, just the right light.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 28, 2024
Park was a dignified man in his midforties, but the linguistic fussiness annoyed and embarrassed Shin.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
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.
