punctilious
Americanadjective
adjective
-
paying scrupulous attention to correctness in etiquette
-
attentive to detail
Synonym Usage
See scrupulous.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of punctilious
First recorded in 1625–35; punctili(o) + -ous
Explanation
A punctilious person pays attention to details. Are you always precisely on time? Is your room perfectly neat? Do you never forget a birthday or a library book's due date? Then you are one of the punctilious people. The adjective punctilious, pronounced "punk-TIL-ee-us," is related to the Italian word puntiglio, meaning "fine point." For someone who is punctilious no point is too fine, no detail too small, to be overlooked. The word is often used to describe people, but it can be used more broadly to apply to observations, behavior, or anything else that is characterized by close attention to detail.
Vocabulary lists containing punctilious
The Great Gatsby
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300 Most Difficult "SAT" Words
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Grade 10, List 3
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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.
John McPhee, a punctilious user of reference material, has written that he mostly looks up words he already knows to better apprehend their nuances.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 19, 2025
The peppiest single Joel ever made might get even closer to Motown’s classic Holland-Dozier-Holland sound than Phil Collins did a year earlier in his punctilious remake of the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2025
By its very nature the justice system is glacial, methodical, punctilious, and backward-looking in ways that make keeping up with the well-resourced, wealthy career criminal supremely challenging.
From Slate ● Oct. 25, 2024
And that doesn’t even include the host of honest mistakes that can and do occur filling out the mountains of punctilious paperwork after a 16-hour day.
From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2024
Her mother wanted to say something, she could tell, and the set smile, the punctilious gestures, were a beginning.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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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.
