pinpoint
Americanverb
noun
-
an insignificant or trifling thing
-
the point of a pin
-
(modifier) exact
a pinpoint aim
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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pinpointsimple
-
pinpointssimple
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have pinpointedperfect
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has pinpointedperfect
-
am pinpointingprogressive
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are pinpointingprogressive
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is pinpointingprogressive
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have been pinpointingperfect progressive
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has been pinpointingperfect progressive
Past
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pinpointedsimple
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had pinpointedperfect
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was pinpointingprogressive
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were pinpointingprogressive
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had been pinpointingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of pinpoint
Explanation
To pinpoint something is to nail down its exact location. The point of a pin is very small and fine. Similarly, when you pinpoint something, you have narrowed down its location to the smallest possibility: you've found out exactly where it is. The government is constantly trying to pinpoint the location of terrorists, just as police try to pinpoint the location of criminals. Dogs can pinpoint many things through smell. It's often hard to pinpoint which car is producing an annoying car alarm. When you pinpoint something, you've found it.
Vocabulary lists containing pinpoint
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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.
See Examples For:
"She just does a survey with her nose, essentially, she can pinpoint exactly where it is, so it's much easier," she said.
From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026
Police say the information provides unprecedented ability to identify suspects, pinpoint stolen vehicles and locate missing persons.
From Salon ● Sep. 28, 2026
But in Hackett’s view, it’s often difficult to pinpoint what’s driving bitcoin, since market catalysts are often very unpredictable.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026
It is impossible to pinpoint which measures were essential to preventing another catastrophe.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
A Recon officer was sent up the chutes to pinpoint the target, while the Retrieval boys took a nice cushy shuttle.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
Three decades after predicting the Asian crisis of 1997, one strategist pinpoints similarities between the financial contagion that spread across Asian economies then and the current AI investment boom that he thinks is a bubble.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026
They combined single-cell sequencing, which identifies which receptors each neuron expresses, with spatial transcriptomics, which pinpoints where those neurons are located.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 30, 2026
The composition is utterly still, devoid of human presence and enlivened only by fluttering harbor flags and the canvas’s scintillating pinpoints of color.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 28, 2026
To repeat, possible Japanese intervention would reverse the flow of liquidity into global markets that Edwards pinpoints.
From Barron's ● Nov. 22, 2025
Then even his blood was golden and glowing, filled with little pinpoints of light, like stars, slowing down, trickling out of him like the turn of constellations across the sky.
From "The Reader" by Traci Chee
So in March, he emailed the inmate he pinpointed as the one who fleeced Monk.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
He was initially tested for Lyme, and it wasn’t until a monthslong antibody study that the Bourbon virus—so far found in only a handful of cases nationwide—was finally pinpointed as the culprit.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
Authorities said they hadn’t yet pinpointed a cause for the Dove fire, which burned in the hills southwest of Sonora — a town outside of Yosemite National Park in southern Tuolumne County.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026
Though he professed to not know the mainland scene "very well", he pinpointed animation and small-scale productions as bright spots.
From Barron's ● Jun. 19, 2026
When he looked down, he had pinpointed Grovers Mill, a rural village in the center of New Jersey about fifty miles from New York City.
From "Spooked!" by Gail Jarrow
Establishing responsibility was also challenging because it required authorities to share maps pinpointing fire hotspots, with overlapping land claims further complicating matters.
From Barron's ● Oct. 16, 2026
Forecast models can often identify the risk of thunderstorms across a wider area, but pinpointing precisely where and when an individual storm will strike is very hard.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
Without pinpointing the source of the outbreak and containing it, cases have the potential to keep rising.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
But then there’s like a plethora of these phases of my life that are marked on YouTube, pinpointing the different ages.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2026
In time, the pinpointing of control areas will become more and more detailed.
From "Phineas Gage" by John Fleischman
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
