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Synonyms

meticulously

American  
[muh-tik-yuh-luhs-lee] / məˈtɪk jə ləs li /

adverb

  1. in a way that shows extreme care about minute details; in a precise and thorough way, sometimes to an excessive degree.

    He'd had collections of various kinds as a kid, each of them meticulously sorted and, yes, even inventoried.


Other Word Forms


Etymology

Origin of meticulously

meticulous ( def. ) + -ly


Explanation

If you clean your house meticulously, you take plenty of time and scour every single nook and cranny, maybe even behind the oven and under the doormat. Meticulous means extremely careful and thorough, so if you do something meticulously, you are painstaking about doing it perfectly. Someone who would never leave her house with an un-ironed t-shirt or a thread hanging loose is someone who dresses meticulously. If your town historian documents every event, from births to remodeled living rooms, then she does her job meticulously, maybe a little too meticulously.

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Vocabulary lists containing meticulously

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:

Roman launched on August 30, carrying optical systems that had been meticulously tested before leaving the ground.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 17, 2026

Staging that key three minutes of the show’s meticulously choreographed, highly anticipated climax, is a technical feat involving more than 100 gallons of water and unwavering physical acumen on the part of the cast.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026

It was then up to a team of journalists in the Der Spiegel headquarters in Hamburg to meticulously go through it all, producing some of the most explosive articles the football world has ever seen.

From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026

As the courtroom confrontation draws near, Mira offers another apothegm: “Rarely does a trial meticulously follow the script: it’s not a play where everyone on the stage knows their lines.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026

Chastely they made plans for the future: after graduation, a white wedding in Cleveland, a house in Shaker, lots of children, law school for him, a cub reportership for her—a plan they followed meticulously.

From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng

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