fussiness

American  

[fuhs-ee-nis] / ˈfʌs i nɪs /

noun

1. the quality of being hard to please.

2. the quality of being obsessed with or critical about petty details.

3. the quality of being excessively ornate or elaborate.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• unfussiness
  noun

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

What we call "fussiness" with a disapproving tone, is often anxiety and sensitivity, says consultant counselling psychologist Dr Ritika Suk Birah.

From BBC • Dec. 21, 2025

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

Davis’ fussiness evokes watchmakers or jewelers, but those analogies miss her humor.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 4, 2023

Without Niles, whose symphonic fussiness almost makes Frasier seem like a regular guy, it’s hard to imagine Frasier existing.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 27, 2023

The boxlike room, stripped of all embellishment or parlor fussiness, a room that wished to be timeless or ahistorical, and there, in the middle of it, my deeply historical, timeworn grandmother.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides